


Echoes of Our Song

by staringatstars



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Inspired by Hadestown, Inspired by Orpheus and Eurydice (Ancient Greek Religion & Lore), M/M, Memory Loss, Slavery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-18
Updated: 2020-01-18
Packaged: 2021-02-27 10:29:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,853
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22215598
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/staringatstars/pseuds/staringatstars
Summary: They say Hadestown is a place closer to Hell than Heaven, but not quite either. It steals your name, your heart, and the breath from your lungs. It's hard to get to, harder to leave, and if Newt's ever going to escape, it'll take everything he has plus a demonic miracle to do so, and that's just to start.
Relationships: Anathema Device/Newton Pulsifer, Aziraphale & Anathema Device, Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens), Crowley & Newton Pulsifer
Comments: 13
Kudos: 47
Collections: Good Omens Big Bang 2019





	Echoes of Our Song

**Author's Note:**

> A huge thanks to [eliza--thornberry](https://eliza--thornberry.tumblr.com/) and [biteinsane](https://biteinsane.tumblr.com/) for their incredible talent and to my beta [toxic-catalyst](https://toxic-catalyst.tumblr.com/). I hope you enjoy our pieces for the [Good Omens Big Bang!!](https://goodomensbigbang.tumblr.com/)
> 
> Edit: More lovely art! Please check out smolghostings' fantastic [piece.](https://smolghostings.tumblr.com/post/190483651005/echoes-of-our-song-staringatstars-good-omens)

There were nights when former witchfinder Newton Pulsifer would lie awake wondering what Anathema saw in him. She was beautiful, intelligent, compassionate, and he just… Well, he wasn’t anything special, was he? He drove a rundown three-wheeler, couldn’t seem to hold a job, broke any electronics he touched, and had wasted a good portion of his eyesight squinting at computer parts in the dark.

And yet, she’d stayed.

She could have done anything after the world didn’t end, gone anywhere, and she’d still chosen to stay with him.

They’d put a stop to the actual Apocalypse — hadn’t they? — and after all that excitement and weirdness, she’d asked what no one else had ever had — “Why is your car called Dick Turbin?”

And she’d listened as he'd eagerly told the story leading up to the long-overdue punchline, staring up at him through dark lashes with an amused quirk to her mouth.

It was better than any gift she could have given him. Better than any reward or blessing.

_‘Why do you love me?’_ sat heavily on the tip of his tongue, weighing it down when she rolled in her sleep and her bare arm brushed his, sending sparks dancing over his skin. He never asked, though. Too afraid that she would smile kindly with words like Fate or Destiny or The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter Said.

No, he’d much rather twine a dark lock of sunlight-threaded hair around his ring finger as he bent to press a kiss to her temple and listened to the contented, sleep-heavy sigh that breezed past her lips.

This wasn’t what occupied his thoughts, however, while he crossed the paved streets of Tadfield on his way to an interview at the local publishing house. Rather, his mind was crowded with dinner plans and a To-Do list of mundane chores.

In short, a future.

Then, just as he stepped off the curb, there was an unpleasant whiff of rotten eggs, a shrieking of wheels burning the tarmac, and Newt wasn’t thinking about anything at all.

.....

.....

.....

Unrelenting heat scorched his throat.

Newt gasped and choked on air, jerking into a sitting position to cough up a lungful of smoke. When the best he could manage were a series of sad rasps, he settled for taking in his new surroundings with frantic urgency.

He’d woken at the base of a brick-and-mortar furnace. Coals glowed behind a cast-iron grill, emanating a wave of heat that stung his face and dried the sweat from his skin. Beyond that lay a labyrinth of copper water pipes and dials from which a voice called out, “Finally awake, are you?”

There was a scraping metallic sound, followed by several soft footfalls that stopped just out of sight.

Though nothing more was said, Newt could sense that whoever occupied this room with him was hesitating. “To be completely honest here, I’m not exactly a joy to look at the moment, but I’ve got some water to give you that’ll help you with that cough, so you might want to close your eyes or...”

“Sir,” Newt croaked, the effort setting off another coughing fit, “if you’re trying not to scare me, I’m afraid you’re off to a rather poor start.”

It was so quiet after that he was almost certain the stranger had taken his water and left. A wave of hopelessness crashed over him. Newt screwed his dry and itching eyes shut. When he could finally bring himself to open them again, a cup of water was sitting by his feet, its contents clean and cool.

Newt nearly downed the whole thing before remembering to sip it. He made it last as long as he could, and when that was done, the voice spoke again, hushed and bemused, “How did you end up here? You and book girl were fine when we left you.” There was a shaky breath. A hitch. “Who was it, then? Hell? Heaven? Someone’s gone and messed with the natural order of things. How they did it without the Antichrist turning them into primordial goo is a question for the ages, though. Still, this’ll put them in Death’s bad books. An unenviable position, really.”

How did this man know so much about them? Had it not been for the half-remembered scenes coming unburied in Newt’s head, he might have thought his only companion in this place was, as his grandmother used to say, knitting with one needle. However, the image of a red-haired gentleman with grey tassels around his neck standing on the tarmac burned at the forefront of his mind. Whoever Newt was with sounded as though he’d been breathing scalding air for some time and was considerably more sibilant in his speech, but the veneer of confidence coating fear was the same.

Plus, only a few people knew of the eleven-year-old Antichrist in Tadfield, and of those people, only one referred to Anathema as book girl.

Newt scrambled to stand, hope ballooning in his chest. “By any chance, would you be Crowley? Do you, uh,” this was starting to make him feel rather foolish, “remember me from the airbase? I,” and he mimed typing on a keyboard with his hands, a hysterical giggle crowding his throat, “fixed things.”

“Crowley,” the man breathed, somewhere between awed and amused. “So that was my name, was it?”

“Ah, yes. Well, I assume so. That other fellow called you that. The man in the waistcoat with the,” Newt pretended to swing a flaming sword, earning himself a dry chuckle. He frowned, edging to the side of the boiler, “You don’t have to keep out of sight, you know.” There. Behind the main water pipe, he glimpsed a pale face and slender body eclipsed by shadow. Russet hair peeked out from under the brim of his hat, shimmering in the firelight. “I already know who you are.”

“S’ not why I’m keeping out of sight.” Though he said that, Crowley crept forward, allowing his spine to bend and twist unnaturally as he navigated out of the tight space he’d crammed himself into.

Before, Newt had believed the dark patches over his cheeks to be bruises, but in the light of the fire he was able to make out individual scales. On top of that, there was nothing human about his eyes, not a trace of white to be seen from the slit pupil to the edge. Just a sickly dull yellow.

The rest of him was covered by gloves, a dapper pinstriped suit, and a matching fedora. The first three buttons of his jacket and shirt were undone, allowing a slip of his collarbone to show, enough for the edge of what looked to be a raised and mottled burn to peek out.

A bitter twist to his mouth, Crowley watched him drink in the sight with a resigned air. “Before you scream,” he sighed, “take this,” and pressed a slip of paper into Newt’s palm. Words stuck in his throat, Newt unfolded it, finding written on the slip his own name written in hastily scrawled letters. “Don’t let them take it from you.”

Perhaps it was because he was in shock, but Newt didn’t have it in him to start screaming at the man trying to help him. Instead, he bent to tuck the paper into his sock. Crowley yanked off his hat to nervously card his fingers through his hair, before adding in a flat, dispassionate tone, “Now, you’ll have to report to work. Unfortunately, the Fates know everyone that comes and goes in this place so there’s no dodging it.”

Latching on to something familiar, Newt rushed to ask, “Work? What kind of work? What will I be expected to do?” Hopefully nothing involving computers.

“Digging, mostly,” replied Crowley with a casual shrug. “The city’s always expanding, after all. It’ll be hard work. Easy to get lost in it.” For a moment, his gaze became distant, unfocused. “Easy to forget yourself.” Then he shook himself, forcing authority into his words from a well of bravado that had already run dry. “The Overseer will give you a change of clothes when you go up. Don’t let them know we know each other, and definitely don’t tell them I helped you, got it?”

As he spoke, he navigated himself towards the exit, dipping and twisting around the pipes with a flexibility that Newt knew with despairing certainty he would never be able to imitate. When Crowley lingered by the door, his snake-eyes narrowed into an impatient squint, Newt jerked his head in a hasty nod.

Satisfied, Crowley tugged down the rim of his hat, “Welcome to Hadestown. It’s no Hell but it’s damn close. Sure would be a shame,” he drawled, one gloved hand reaching up to scratch at the scales crawling up his neck, “if you were to try fixing this place. After all,” and he struck a pose that sang with confidence, “what’s a town of steel and fire to the Apocalypse?”

At the vast silence that greeted the question, Crowley could only sigh, his shoulders slumping with the weight of it. “Think about it, human,” he said finally. “You’ll have little else to think about in the hard days to come.”

Whatever meaning lurked beneath the surface, however, was lost on Newt, who had just realized that he was going to be left alone to suffocate, buried under the fear this town instilled in him. He rushed to close the distance between himself and Crowley as much as he could, though the scalding heat of the pipes blocking the way made him flinch.“Wait!” In the process of slipping into the shadows, the man halted mid-step, swaying slightly. “How will I find you?”

A wintery smile curved Crowley’s bloodless lips, cutting into sallow cheeks and scales.

“You won’t.” Stepping into the darkness with a lazy wave, his final words drifted over his shoulder, “I’ll find you.”

Rarely did Aziraphale entertain the notion of returning to Heaven, and only ever as a hypothetical— a way of weighing the pros and cons of the life he’d chosen.

Its pearly gates had remained closed to him ever since he’d refused to participate in the Grand Plan. It was a reality that stung on occasion, not so much because he missed it but rather that his fellow angels had pushed him to the decision. They looked down on his kindness, his love for humanity, and what that said about _them_ broke his heart.

It had taken weeks before he could fully grasp how far Heaven had fallen, how flawed it was after millennia of Her silence, and Crowley had been there for him every step of the way.

One day, however, he missed their lunch date. Normally, the demon would call or text to let Aziraphale know if something had come up, usually an emergency since Crowley would never cancel their rendezvous for anything less, but this time there had been no notice, just an empty seat that remained empty. Afterwards, Aziraphale attempted to contact him, leaving message after message on his ansaphone. Eventually, the machine became too full to hold his increasingly alarmed voicemails, and Aziraphale cast off his doubts about whether or not he was overacting and took a taxi to Crowley’s flat to find a disaster zone.

There were deep gouges in the flooring, jagged and thin, and scorch marks on the walls. The stuffing had been ripped out of the throne’s red velvet cushion, and from where Aziraphale stood, he could hear the rustle of dead leaves. It had been weeks since anyone had watered Crowley’s plants and while some of them were stubbornly hanging on, most of them were wilted, brown, and dry.

This simply wouldn’t do.

With a minor miracle, Aziraphale reinvigorated the foliage. Green bled into their stems as they thickened and straightened, their leaves lifted, and any flowers that had withered became whole, their petals defying gravity and perhaps reality to reassemble into a picture of health. To ensure that the miracle stuck, Aziraphale generously watered each of the plants, then exited the building, finding the taxi idling by the curb. He climbed into the back seat with a grim expression and told the driver where to take him next.

He would remember the instructions long enough to drop Aziraphale off by the entrance, and not a moment longer.

The funeral was scheduled for late in the following week.

Newt had an insurance policy that covered the cost of the coffin and plot. Though his mother offered to help pay for the services, Anathema stubbornly refused to accept. She arranged for everything, from floral arrangements to invitations. Neither of them had many friends, so the attendees mostly consisted of family, their neighbors, and the Them.

Deep down, Anathema knew it wasn’t her fault that Newt had died. That didn’t stop her from berating herself every day and every night for burning the continuation of Agnes Nutter’s prophecies. If she had kept the book she would have doubtlessly continued to be a professional descendant for the rest of her days, but Newt might still be alive.

Dressed in a black dress with billowing lace sleeves and a veil, she paced in her living room.

“Why didn’t you tell me this would happen, Agatha? You’ve always protected our family in the past.” If she had known she was going to lose him, she might not have given him her heart, except she couldn’t imagine any version of her life where she didn’t fall for him. It was impossible not to love him. Impossible not to miss him when his side of the bed still smelled like his cologne and singed wires.

The neighborhood wives pitied her, said she was too young to be a widow, and they were right. She’d never asked Newt to marry her.

She’d thought they’d had time.

Adam and his friends were still so young. They’d never gone to a funeral before, never lost a loved one. Anathema did her best to comfort them, especially Adam, who blamed himself even though he was an eleven-year-old boy and sometimes bad things happened. She embraced him at the funeral, told him how remarkably strong, how clever and kind and brave he was, and held him close when he started to cry.

Not even the Antichrist could save everyone, but if it were up to him, he’d tear himself up inside trying. Anathema was so focused on keeping it together for his sake that she only caught the tail-end of what Adam was saying.

“— cheated.”

She pursed her lips, “I'm sorry I didn't catch that. Who cheated, Adam?”

He’d looked up at her with tear-stained cheeks, his expression one of abject misery. “Both of them. All of them. Heaven and Hell.” Then, with uncommon viciousness, “They’re a bunch of rotten, no-good cheaters and Newt’s been caught in the middle of their _stupid_ game.”

It didn’t take long for Anathema to track down Madame Tracy after that.

“Where is he?!” The question was punctuated by a pair of soft, manicured hands slamming on Gabriel’s desk. The Archangel looked up from his paperwork to find an irate Principality staring down at him. “It’s been months, Gabriel. What have you done to Crowley?”

It seemed that surviving a pillar of hellfire had finally put some steel in Aziraphale’s spine. A pity that it had to be directed at him rather than the Enemy, but then the Principality had never been very good at doing what was expected of him, up to and including dying.

“Why would I place my celestial being anywhere near that demon?” Gabriel sneered. “I’d rather gargle hellfire.” To his shock, Aziraphale looked as though he may actually be considering fetching it for him, and he hastened to add, “Besides, you couldn’t be farther from him if you tried. Hades decided to spend this summer with his beloved, and who better to watch his precious town than the Serpent of Eden?”

Aziraphale sputtered. “You’re saying Crowley was, what, _loaned out_ to Hades?”

While there was only one true God, there were many gods of human invention. Sometimes, concentrated belief brought them into being. Other times, a demon would assume the identity of a minor deity to either carry out the role that was expected of them or take advantage of the position to sway their believers one way or the other. Crowley had attempted this more than once, assuming the role of a snake god in Egypt, of Medusa, of Circe. He’d kept himself occupied over the years, often becoming fiercely protective of his followers, especially the downtrodden, beaten, and abused.

Hades was a different story.

There was no pretending to be the King of the Underworld, after all. What he was, not even Aziraphale could say. Some believed he was yet another face of the devil, while many would posit that centuries of belief in the Roman and Greek pantheon had breathed life into myth, threading stories into truth.

Whatever he may be, demon or devil or god, Hades was very real, indeed. And if Crowley had been promised to his service, there was little Aziraphale could do.

That was what he would have told himself before the Apocalypse, at least. Now, they were on their own side. Hell didn’t have the right to steal Crowley away from his home. He didn’t belong to them anymore. In truth, he never had.

“I heard he called your name when he was dragged to the Underworld,” Aziraphale snapped out of his thoughts at the sound of Gabriel’s casually delivered taunt. “Where were you, I wonder?”

“Tell me how to find him or so help me, Gabriel—”

Gabriel waved him off. “Spare me your impotent threats, will you?” He rested his chin on his hands, showing off a tight, pearly-white smile. “I’ll tell you whatever you want if it’ll get you out of my office. Besides, the thought of you marching down to your inevitable doom does bring a certain amount of satisfaction.” He cocked his head, regarding Aziraphale with the detached interest of an insect collector pinning the wings of a butterfly. “Not that I care, but how far are you willing to go for that demon of yours? Would you Fall for him?”

Aziraphale straightened, setting his jaw. “I already have.”

The Archangel had the nerve to chuckle. “They’re going to eat you alive, sunshine.” Then, true to his word, he told the Principality how to reach Hadestown. In the direction of Hell, but not quite as deep. Past rivers and barbed wire and dogs so starved they would rip even an angel to pieces if given the chance.

Once he was done delivering his instructions, Aziraphale turned on his heel and marched out of Heaven with his head held high.

At the time of his return to the bookshop, his phone was ringing without any sign of stopping. Whoever was trying to get in touch with him had been doing so for some time, and was clearly persistent. He truly hoped it wasn’t anyone interested in buying a book. He simply wasn’t up for that kind of tomfoolery at the moment.

Picking up the phone, he greeted breathlessly, “Yes, hello. Sorry for the wait. This is Aziraphale speaking. How may I be of service?”

“Aziraphale!” A young woman with an American accent exclaimed. “Thank — Oh, it doesn’t matter, really. Listen, it’s Anathema Device. The girl with Agnes Nutter's book of prophecies? Your friend hit me with his car?” She prompted when Aziraphale failed to respond. Of course, he’d known exactly who she was. “Please, I need your help.”

“I’m a bit preoccupied at the moment, my dear. Could this perhaps wait—”

“My boyfriend, Newt — the one who was with me at the airbase? He's,” her breath hitched on a sob, “died.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Aziraphale replied automatically, then winced, and added with sincerity, “He seemed like a fine lad.”

“He was. _Is._ It wasn’t time for him to die, you see. And I don’t mean that as in to say that we were separated too soon or that my _bleeding heart_ can’t bear the thought of his parting. Madame Tracy couldn’t get in touch with him, said he’s not in Heaven or Hell. So can you, an angel, tell me how that’s possible? If not there, where else could he have gone?” As she spoke, an idea began to form in Aziraphale’s head.

He tugged absently at the cord, thinking of a place that was far from Heaven and not quite Hell. Against his better judgment, he shared what he knew of it, "There is a town I know of where souls not claimed by Heaven or Hell may reside. It is no place for the living, my dear girl, but for unhappy souls locked in eternal service to the King of the Underworld." He paused for a breath he didn't need to take. "No. It would be much too dangerous for me to bring you there."

The line went utterly noiseless, and as the silence stretched, there came a chill that made him shiver. “I am the descendant of a very powerful witch,” said Anathema at last, “and I wield no small amount of magic of my own. Therefore, know that if you do not let me come with you, I will follow you. I will follow you to the ends of the Earth and, with or without your help, I will bring my boyfriend back home. Have I made myself clear?”

Despite his own misgivings, Aziraphale couldn’t help admiring her determination.

“As crystal, my dear.”

By the time Newt found the right shapes to contort his body into so that he could slip past the scalding pipes and follow after Crowley, he was long gone. A hallway stretched before him, its interior stained and rusted. Newt peeled off his jacket, rolled up his sleeves, then plunged ahead, keeping his head down and his shoulders high.

He’d never see Anathema again if he didn’t move forward. Whatever happened from here on out, whatever it was that waited at the end of the tunnel, that single undeniable fact would remain.

There was persistent drumming coming from the end of the hallway, keeping a slow, steady rhythm he could feel in his bones. It vibrated through the pipework, and as he approached it grew louder, forcing his racing heart into matching the beat.

As though in a trance, he stood motionless at the exit, awash in the orange glow of the factory. In the distance, a town burning bright with neon lights seared his eyes. There was no sun or moon above. No stars, though even if there were any, the blinding illumination of the buildings would have drowned them out.

Outside of the town stood the fields and factories, and it was from there that the drumming originated. Clothed in overalls and drenched in sweat, Newt could make out swathes of gray-faced workers swinging pickaxes to the rhythm, some of them humming tunelessly, others so silent and lifeless in their movements they were little more than ghosts.

An Overseer watched them from a high tower, staring down at the workers with a pinched expression, like a vulture waiting for one of them to fall. There was a leather whip, caked in mud and cracked from use, clenched in her gloved hand. Newt felt a seed of outrage sprout inside him at the sight. Unlike Anathema, it wasn’t in his nature to go charging into a situation. She was bold and brilliant, but what Newt didn’t realize was that they each shared one very important trait— bravery.

As well as a firm sense of what was right and good and just, and what was not.

Even the bravest men can be afraid. It’s not the fear that matters.

So, when one of the workers staggered, a young woman with limp curls of black hair and streaks of sweat on her cheeks, and the Overseer’s whip flicked out, Newt’s first instinct was to shout a warning. Before he could so much as utter a syllable, a hand clamped over his mouth.

“What do you think you can do to help them?” Ignoring the muffled protests under his palm, Crowley snarled, pinning him with a glare so intense it burned, “I’ve been here much longer than you, and even I haven’t—” All at once, his jaw slammed shut. Crowley dragged in air through his teeth, visibly struggling for control. Newt stopped trying to speak, opting instead to remain as still as he could manage without actually being a statue. Eventually, Crowley eased his grip on the young man’s face and withdrew, allowing Newt to see the bundle of muddy clothes under his arm.

The demon’s attention drifted, moving down the hill to where the workers slaved under the merciless watch of their Overseer. “If you hide,” he said slowly, almost to himself, “they will find you, and things will turn out so much worse than if you go willingly, but you can’t join them looking so fresh, and the very last thing you want to do is make an enemy of the Watcher on your first day.” He shoved the bundle of clothes at Newt. They turned out to be a pair of overalls and a grey shirt. “Wear these. You’ll blend in better. And for _Someone’s_ sake, keep your mouth shut. I’ll handle the introductions, thank you.”

“That’s all well and good, sir,” a collection of emotions passed over Crowley’s face, too quick to decipher before they were gone, “but how do I know this is real? For all I know, this could be a hallucination or a dying dream of some sort…” A brief flash of memory derailed his train of thought, replacing it with the blaring sound of a horn, shifting colors, and an instant of the greatest agony he’d ever known.

A pathetic noise left Newt’s mouth without permission, not quite a whimper but close enough that he would deny ever having made it, and then just as suddenly the oppressive feeling was lifted from his shoulders. When he refocused on Crowley, the look on his face was unexpectedly gentle. “Am I really what you want to be dreaming about while you die?” He asked quietly, shadows shifting over his skin.

Out with it. It’s like ripping off a band-aid.

“I don’t think,” Newt swallowed, his nerves momentarily getting the better of him, “...you’re real.”

Crowley blinked exactly once, slow and deliberate. “Oh.”

“No offense meant, of course.”

“Oh, of course. You’ve only just accused me of being a fiction constructed by — What was it? An overactive imagination? Indigestion?” He grinned, showing off a pair of canines that extended into curved fangs, and started down the rocky hill. After moving several feet, he plopped down onto the soil, disturbing dust and flecks of shining metamorphic rock. “Humans,” Newt heard him mutter under his breath with the vehemence of a curse. “Honestly.”

Quelling the urge to follow him, Newt slunk back into the corridor with the rusty pipes, the beating of the drums pounding ceaselessly against his skull while he worked to cast off his clothes and pull on the overalls. Luckily, they were a decent enough fit, though one of the straps was too big and kept slipping off his shoulder when he moved.

When he was finished, he found to his dismay that he was drenched in sweat from the heat of the factory and feeling significantly grimier than before. Crowley considered him for a moment, “Yeah, one more thing,” and shoved him into the mud.

Picking himself up, Newt furiously wiped the gunk from his eyes, “What in the blazes was that for?!” He swiped fruitlessly at his overalls, but there was nothing to be done. His entire front was drenched with the stuff.

“Still not starved or dead-eyed enough,” the demon decided, marigold-yellow eyes roving over him with a hint of a frown, “but with any luck, the Watcher won’t think it’s your first day at least and won’t go trying to break you in like the rest of them.”

The anger left Newt as quickly as it had come, leaving coldness in its wake. “It certainly sounds like something I’d rather avoid.”

“Keep your head down, keep quiet, and remember your name. If you can manage those three things,” Crowley held up three fingers directly in front of Newt’s dirt-stained glasses to emphasize his point, “you’ll find your way out of this.”

This time when Crowley started heading down the hill to the field below, his torso swaying fluidly in time to the beat of the drums, Newt followed on his heels. An uncertain future awaited him, one where his fate rested in the hands of someone in a dapper suit with scales cropping up in patches up his neck and in smatterings over his cheeks and forehead. So far, though, all Crowley had done was try to help him. That, added to the fact that he was in no position to refuse help at the moment, convinced Newt to trust him.

“Thank—” Newt started to say as he jogged to keep pace, though the effect was somewhat mitigated when his foot caught on a loose stone. The demon’s hand shot out to grip his elbow, righting him, then widened his strides to walk ahead, purposely and with authority. Clearing his throat, he tried again, this time forming his words carefully, “Thank you. Crowley.”

Crowley’s steps slowed for a moment, one hand coming to rest on the patch of shimmering black scales under his collar. Though this allowed Newt to catch up, it wasn’t long before he resumed his former prowling pace, leaving him behind so decisively that it had to be intentional.

When they were standing on the outskirts of the field where the workers swung their pickaxes, Crowley stared hard at the toil ahead of them, wearing a grim expression, “I wouldn’t thank me just yet.”

The Watcher caught sight of them standing under bright fluorescent lights and climbed down from her tower to meet them halfway. She was stocky, with biceps that made Newt suddenly wish he’d gone to the gym more often. Her gaze flitted over him, taking in the dirt and overalls with a sneer, then moved to Crowley, whereupon her entire demeanor changed, “How can I be of service, my lord?”

Lord?

Crowley scowled, “This here’s a transfer from the oil drilling division. Fumes didn’t agree with him. Anyway, I expect you to put him to work. Make sure he’s carrying his weight, same as the rest of them,” and she bowed her head, grabbing Newt by the elbow with a bruising grip and yanking him towards her.

“Of course, my lord.”

As surreptitiously as he could manage, Newt attempted to catch Crowley’s eye, but the man either didn’t notice or was actively avoiding him. It was as though a switch had been flipped, turning off the flicker of goodness and compassion he’d witnessed only minutes earlier, and leaving behind a cold, empty husk. After answering the Watcher with a noise of cursory acknowledgment, his dull yellow eyes passed over Newt without a trace of recognition.

Following that, Crowley inclined his head towards the Watcher, turned, and left without once looking back.

Aziraphale did not drive the Bentley to Tadfield.

What he did, instead, was pile miracles onto the vehicle. There was one to avoid notice from traffic cops, another to be impenetrable to damage, and the last was to ensure that the vehicle’s illegal curbside parking caused just enough of a disturbance to classify it as a general nuisance to the public.

Once that was done, he hailed a taxi driver who would kindly drive him all the way to Tadfield, and though the driver wouldn’t know why they’d agreed to such a time-consuming endeavor, they would later on find themselves beset by a string of good luck that would last them a week at least.

Anathema was waiting for him when he arrived.

Legend told of an entrance to the Underworld that could be found among the caves of the Peloponnesian islands, so that was where they were heading. There was no telling if Newt would be there, except that Anathema had sensed a demonic aura around the crash site, one that lingered, thick and clinging and sticky as tar. There was nothing natural about Newt’s death. Even if Newt wasn’t with Crowley, at least she could count on having both an angel and a Fallen working to help her find him.

They boarded the earliest flight to Greece.

Since Aziraphale was reluctant to expend too much of his energy on miracles, they rode Economy class, though the children sitting around them were remarkably well-behaved during the duration of their trip. In spite of her suspicions and the occasional side-eye, though let it not be said that she was complaining, the angel remained placid and composed, sitting upright in his seat with the posture of a broomstick and an expression of soldier-like focus.

It wasn’t until they reached the Security Control officer in Athens that they encountered any trouble, and even then it was a minor inconvenience at best.

“Reason for entering the country?” The officer droned, looking as though she were five hours into a seven-hour shift and counting the minutes.

Anathema leaned forward, keeping her voice low, “Actually, I’m here to find my Newt. There’s been a mistake, you see. He wasn’t meant to die. Agnes would have told me if he was, I’m sure of it.” Aziraphale glanced down at her kindly, yet also distanced himself from her, the suggestion being that he felt quite sorry for this poor distressed and possibly delusional woman that he most certainly did not know.

The officer squinted at the pair of them. “You mean to tell me you’ve traveled all the way to Greece to find your pet lizard?”

“Actually,” Aziraphale interrupted kindly, “newts aren’t lizards at all. They’re semi-aquatic amphibians. Marvelous creatures, really.”

Anathema silenced him with a glare. “I’m looking for my boyfriend.” The beginnings of a frown tugged at the corners of her mouth. “At least, I think he’s my boyfriend. It’s all rather complicated.” Her eyes lit up with an idea. She took an exaggerated breath the way she’d seen the angel do before launching into a very long, very detailed account of events, “What happened was -” The officer slammed a stamp down on her boarding pass, gesturing for her to move along. Grinning, Anathema gathered up her papers and hustled to join the security line.

Aziraphale smiled sagaciously at the officer. He was asked the same question, to which he responded, “I’m afraid I’m looking for a serpent, though I imagine he’s likely man-shaped at the moment,” and was hastily approved, with the caveat being that he made no attempt to capture or transport the creature.

“Right-o, my good lady,” agreed Aziraphale without promising any such thing.

It had taken a bit of persuasion to convince one of the sailors docked in the harbor to drop them off on one of the beaches outside the caves, but after spending over six hours trapped in an airplane with nothing to do but tap their feet and fret, the thought of waiting until morning to begin their journey in earnest was intolerable.

Once alone, Anathema began scrying for Newt with a bowl of the green-blue seawater and a milky white crystal, hands clenched tightly around a pair of shattered glasses as she paced across the shore. Her boots sank into the pearl-dust sand, throwing off her concentration, and she let out a frustrated groan. Aziraphale, who hadn’t moved since they'd arrived, closed his eyes, reaching out with tendrils of angelic power to locate traces of hickory smoke and a cool autumn wind, anything that could be attributed to Crowley’s aura. Instead, what he found was an unending amalgamation of toil, strife, and loss so strong and concentrated it nearly overwhelmed him. There were souls - human souls - coated in coal, tar, and petrol, like birds trapped in an oil spill, their flight feathers heavy and bound.

He might have cried out, because when he opened his eyes, Anathema was hovering over him with concern, long fingers ghosting over him with the intention to heal and no inkling of how to do so.

When he recounted to her what he’d felt, she extended her own senses, latching onto the heart-sick auras, the malignant taint of death emanating from a cave’s mouth that stretched wide, high and open as a cathedral. Its ceiling was covered in stalactites that hung like rows of shark’s teeth, and the floor was entirely submerged in seawater. Before Anathema could forge ahead, Aziraphale held out a hand to her in the manner of a true gentleman, “Why ruin your clothes, my dear, when there are dryer ways to travel?”

He did not take Anathema’s hesitation personally, only waited patiently until she was ready, then guided her towards the edge. One step forward. Then another. Their feet never sank past the surface, remaining solidly level as though they were walking on stone.

Anathema gripped his arm tightly with both hands, hanging on for dear life, yet the further they walked the deeper the water grew, and fear gave way to amazement. It was like holding onto her abuelo when he'd taught her how to swim, steady and sure. She looked down to study the shimmering shells peeking out of the sand, then tilted her head up to stare at the weathered cave walls around them, smooth and sloping and painted in the last gasp of a sunset. Dark browns, tans, and violet danced around them, spattered with slivers of shadow that darted like minnows and sparks of golden light.

She was so caught up in the beauty of it all that it took her a moment to realize they were descending. The cave continued past where her senses told her it should have stopped. Gravity weighed heavier on them as the entrance shrank to a pinpoint glow, and then even that was swallowed up, leaving them to navigate the descent in semi-darkness.

A surge of anxiety caused a wave of dizziness to wash over her, but just when it seemed as though her knees might give out — “No need to fret, my dear girl,” said the angel, giving the back of her hand a reassuring pat, “I shall not let you fall.”

Anathema’s brow furrowed at that. “If you’re somehow doing this on purpose, I suggest that you stop _very_ quickly.” This earned her a look of innocent bafflement that went a long way towards easing her suspicions. There was, of course, the possibility that this was a ruse, as well, but that would lead to overthinking and paranoia, neither of which she could afford when Newt was on the line.

She only had to trust the angel long enough to save him. Surely, she could manage that much.

It would have been nice to have had a series of prophecies on hand to guide her to the best course of action. By burning Agnes Nutter’s book, she might as well have lit Newton Pulsifer’s funeral pyre herself. Now, it was up to her to do everything in her power to set things right and if, after all was said and done, he couldn’t bring himself to forgive her for letting this happen, for dragging him into misfortune and tragedy, then she’d understand.

She’d let him go.

But first, they had to find him.

Her thoughts were interrupted by the sound of barking and splashing. Distracted, her foot caught on something solid, the momentum causing her to pitch forward. The instant she lost contact with the angel the magic holding her up vanished and she plummeted into the chilly water. There were smooth, long objects shifting beneath her feet, and when her nails scraped against the protrusion that had caused her to fall, the sensation sent a shiver down her spine that had nothing to do with the cold. Above her, the angel exclaimed his alarm. A ball of light appeared in his palm, illuminating the darkness.

A chorus of rumbling growls started up in the distance. A giant black paw came into view, its claws large and sharp enough to slice a human in two. Anathema looked at what her hand was wrapped around and saw stark-white bone. Part of a rib.

She snatched it up on instinct, carrying it with her even after Aziraphale pulled her to her feet. They stared in horror at the massive three-headed dog blocking their path. “Κέρβερος,” whispered the angel. The canine’s pointed ears twitched at the sound of its name. “Cerberus.”

There were piles of bones lying in the sand beneath their feet and now it was easy to see why. “Can’t you just,” she gesticulated vaguely, “ask it to let us pass?”

Cerberus crouched, keeping their thick-skulled Mastiff heads from brushing against the cave’s ceiling. The resulting position of their massive body could be likened to the instant before a pounce. “Of course, I could.” Aziraphale regarded the beast warily, keeping his distance. “Unfortunately, the guardian of the gate to the Underworld doesn’t look to be in the mood to listen to reason.”

“What about music?” Anathema suggested desperately. “Orpheus played the lyre to lull Cerberus to sleep and slip past. If it worked for him, it could work for us.”

Aziraphale made a soft noise of offense. “Unless you’re hiding some sort of instrument in your boot, my alleged musical inclinations will hardly be of use to us.”

“Oh!” She huffed with exasperation. “You’re an angel, aren’t you?” The angel arched a wry brow at that. He didn’t gesture to the ball of light providing their only source of illumination or the ethereal radiance of his skin, but only because there was no need to. “You _must_ be able to do something.” They couldn’t fail when they’d only just started. Anathema’s nails dug into the rib gripped tightly in her hand. It was too big to be human. Looking at it, she realized that it was probably bovine in nature, which meant that the femurs and tibia underneath them weren’t all human, either. Perhaps animals had wandered towards the entrance to the Underworld, or maybe they were given as a sacrifice.

Or maybe…

Well, even three-headed guard dogs had to be fed, and there was nothing in the legends to suggest that Hades was a terrible pet owner. Plus, she’d watched Adam play with his dog outside her cottage enough times to know that if a dog were to be truly happy, they needed to be played with.

How much energy would a gigantic three-headed dog have to burn after spending centuries of being cooped up in a cave?

Disturbed by the dog’s padding footfalls, now so close its silhouette loomed ominously over their heads as three pairs of red eyes burned like smoldering coals in the dark. The water under them became choppy, tipping and curling and sloshing against the cavern walls. Struggling for balance, she shoved the rib at Aziraphale, “Take this and throw it as far as you can.” The angel stared at the massive bone clutched in his arms for a moment.

Understanding bloomed over his features and his face lit up with delight.

As easy as if he were lifting a toothpick, Aziraphale hoisted the bovine rib over his head and shook it. One of the heads of Cerberus followed the movement. A tongue black as tar lolled from their mouth. “See the stick?” Another joined the first, outvoting the one in the middle for control of the body. With a delighted grin, the angel called, “Go get it, boy!” And he hurled the bone towards the entrance, grabbing ahold of Anathema to steady her when the fearsome canine barked, tail wagging, and loped past, leaving swathes of foamy waves and the pungent scent of wet dog in its wake.

Laughter came to a boil in the back of Anathema’s throat, threatening to spill forth, high-pitched and wild.

Pearlescent wings unfurled from the angel’s back, stealing her voice.

Aziraphale’s sleek primaries ghosted over her sleeves for a moment, then extended outwards, eclipsing the eternal night of the cave with a radiance that shone ephemeral and pure. “Let us not dawdle here any longer, Miss Device. You and I are both aware of what happens after the stick is retrieved.” With a powerful beat of his wings, he launched them down the tunnel at a startling speed. Anathema felt chilly spray hit her skirts as they rocketed past, the wind buffeting her cheeks and hair. Even so, the howl that followed their desperate descent was so clear and booming she could imagine the beast’s breath warming the nape of her neck.

Until Aziraphale set them down where the stone and rock turned to brick and mortar, the sea beneath turned to a concrete platform, she didn’t dare look behind.

She’d barely regained her bearings, swatting away the angel’s fussing as she righted herself, when the ground began to tremble. A train roared along the tracks, railroad car after railroad car rushing past in a blur. The wheels squealed and shrieked, kicking up sparks, and smoke belched from its stack in suffocating clouds. There was no use shouting over it. Nothing to do except wait for it to leave the station.

For that was where they were now. The cave’s domed ceiling was now made of glass and metal beams, and on the wall clocks gave three different times, though the time and symbols were always changing, shifting at a rate too quickly to pinpoint. Under the clocks was a single ticket booth, and inside stood an elderly man in a silver suit and patterned vest. She glanced up at Aziraphale, relieved to see that he’d put his wings away, though something about the man’s impatient gesturing caused her to wonder if he’d been expecting them. The chances that he was a normal human were exceedingly slim, after all.

Normal humans didn’t sell train tickets in a station guarded by Cerberus.

It was only when they approached that she was able to make out the feathers decorating the arms of his sleeves. As though reading her mind, the elderly gentleman leaned casually against the counter with a wink, “The two of you wouldn’t happen to have any tickets now, would you?”

Aziraphale made his way to the window with a confident, uniform stride. Though the flaming sword was absent, he was still every inch the angel at the airbase. “I think you’ll find, my good sir,” with a fluid movement, he pulled out a pair of golden tickets from beneath his waistcoat, “that we do.” The elderly man scrutinized the tickets with a magnifying glass, checking for forgery. Anathema bristled, though to be completely honest, she wasn’t well-versed in the legality of miracling documents into existence.

In any case, the elderly man scratched his graying hair, checked the schedule, then shrugged, “Well, I’ll be damned. So you do. Can’t say for the life of me how you managed it, but it looks like you’re both taking the train to Hadestown.” He slipped them back their tickets with a troubled expression. “You folks seem like good people. I hope you find what you’re looking for. I really do.”

“How do you know we’re looking for something?” Anathema asked, having not yet learned that some questions were better left unanswered.

The feathers on the old man’s sleeves twitched. “Nobody goes to Hadestown anymore unless they’ve either looking to find something important… or looking to lose it.” Aziraphale stiffened. Anathema squared her shoulders.

The station master regarded them in silence, tapped his chin, then apparently satisfied with whatever it was he’d seen, gestured to the tracks with a grin that brought out the gleam of humor in his dark eyes. “Next train will be here in a minute. Stand behind the line and try not to disturb the other passengers if you can help it.” He nodded to each of them in turn, addressing them by name, then pulled a shutter over the window and changed the sign to indicate that the counter was closed.

Aziraphale stared vacantly at the window, seemingly at a loss for words, then shuffled over to the white line at the edge of the station, clasping the tickets to his chest.

When the second train arrived, it brought with it a wintry gust and the scent of burning oil. It stopped for them, and the doors to the railroad car opened, revealing red velvet upholstery on the seats.

They sat together, the angel taking the aisle seat, while Anathema gazed out the window, finding lantern lights in the distance. They were overshadowed by a towering wall that circled around a mining town. The settlement glowed like the heart of a star, burning and blazing. Yet, even so, there was something so artificial and out-of-place about it that Las Vegas came to mind. That neon-bright necropolis, she knew, was their destination.

As she stared into the distance, the reflection of the seats behind them changed. Now, three old women in dresses spun from spider’s silk and fog sat there, their long hair wrapped in cloth, and when Anathema glanced at their images reflected in the glass, their unblinking gazes fixed on her with identical enigmatic smiles.

She moved to face them, only to be stopped by an urgently whispered, “Ignore them.” She glanced instead at Aziraphale, who was staring stiffly straight ahead. “Pretend you can’t see them. If they speak to you, pretend you can’t hear them.” It was easier said than done. She was soon distracted, however, when a tall and slender man walked down the aisle to check their tickets. His hair was white and wispy, his fingers neigh skeletal in their length and thinness, and his pupils were an unusual shade of pink. He greeted Aziraphale with a nod, punched their tickets, then returned to the conductor’s car.

As the station master had suggested, there were not very many visitors to Hadestown these days.

When the train carried them over a serene-looking river, Aziraphale gripped his armrests, glancing uneasily out the window at the unnaturally calm waters below. It carried them past cottages and lodges and cabins. Anathema saw them all, committing them to memory in an effort to distract herself from the certainty that they were being watched.

The angel had one last thing to impart on her before they reached their destination, “Remember this if nothing else, Miss Device: Persephone needed to consume only seven pomegranate seeds to be bound to this place for eternity, and she was the daughter of Demeter. It will take far less to do far more to you, I’m afraid.”

Anathema inclined her head in a small nod. “Don’t drink their water. Don’t eat their food. Got it.”

The train was beginning to slow.

A brief look at the window revealed that the three women had vanished without a trace, and Anathema gasped. The surrealness of her circumstances was starting to dawn on her. Yes, her ancestor was a bonafide witch and, yes, her neighbor was the Antichrist and the man-shaped being sitting next to her was an angel, but that didn’t mean finding out the Greek gods were apparently real and still very much kicking wasn’t an earth-shattering discovery. It did mean, however, that she was a little better equipped to deal with it than most humans, and could only guess at how upset and confused Newt must be.

He was dealing with these revelations all on his own.

What if he didn’t want to see her? What if he blamed her? This was all wrong. She didn’t even know for certain that Newt was in Hades. There was no way to know where he was or how to find him and it was all her -

Fingers brushed her arm, featherlight. The touch was grounding. Chancing a glance at the angel, she noticed how his face had gone pale, mouth now pressed into an unhappy line.

After a deep, calming breath, she admitted bitterly, “I never should have burned Agnes’ book.” Upon hearing her confession, Aziraphale snapped out of his reverie, gasping like a Victorian maiden with a hand clasped to his breast.

“Yes, well…” The angel began, keeping his tone deliberately mild. “Free will has always been your prerogative, I suppose.” A rueful chuckle slipped past his carefully maintained composure. “It’s certainly up to you to choose how you exercise it. Hardly up to me to tell you that burning a book of prophecy was a dreadful waste.” Anathema’s brows climbed to her hairline. “Of course, if you’d wanted to be rid of it, I would have gladly taken it off your hands.”

“And would you have refrained from reading it? Would you have been able to resist the temptation?” Though he opened his mouth to reply, no sound came out. Eventually, he gave up on finding a suitable response, crossing his arms over his chest with a huff as he settled into his chair. The sight brought an unexpected smile to Anathema’s face. She felt unburdened. Steady.

It would seem there were advantages to having an angel on her side, after all.

Seated on the hard, unforgiving mattress in his barracks, Newt was bent over a slip of paper, tracing the letters of his name. It was always harder to remember at the end of his shift. He suspected that there was something in the water the Watcher provided for the workers, but when the only other option was going thirsty, what choice did he have? Even if they didn’t technically need food, water, or rest anymore, the hours of shoveling coal out of the mine took their toll.

That wasn’t to say he hadn’t tried.

Early on, he’d attempted to surreptitiously toss the water, dumping it in dark corners of the mine where the wet dirt would hopefully go unnoticed. He thought the foreman might have cottoned on to what he was doing by the second day, but he held his tongue, pretended not to see. On the third, Newt wasn’t quick enough. His body remembered needing water. It remembered thirst. Without it, his senses got duller. He got slower, and the Watcher caught him. She forced cup after cup down his throat, spilling it over his clothes while the other workers kept their heads down. The ground was hard and cold on his knees when she finally released him, and it had been with a wounded cry that he’d realized he couldn’t recall the details of Anathema’s face, anymore.

What color had her hair been? Dark brown or blond or auburn?

His hands remembered cupping her chin, but what had the shape of it been?

Now, he traced the hastily scrawled out letters of his name with the tip of a blunt nail. They were faded now and stained with drops of blood, smears of dirt, and sweat. Soon, he wouldn't be able to make them out at all and when that happened he’d be just like the others - beaten down and resigned to spending the rest of eternity mining in the underground.

What had it felt like to stand under the light of day and feel the warmth of the sun? It seemed so long ago now. His voice had grown raspy over the weeks from inhaling the mine dust, though it was rare that anyone gave him cause to speak, so it hardly mattered whether or not he could. There were wounds on his back that ached when he was still and screamed when he stretched, a souvenir from when he’d protested against the whipping of a young woman who’d collapsed on the line. The Watcher had hated him ever since he’d abandoned any modicum of self-preservation he might have had and dared to question her methods. It was now her personal mission to make every single day a new kind of hell for him.

Crowley, for all that he’d helped him at the start, hadn’t made any more appearances, and Newt was beginning to suspect that the sharply dressed man with the yellow eyes was purposely making himself scarce. Maybe he didn’t want to face Newt after tricking him into servitude, because that was what this was, wasn’t it? Sure, they were given food to eat and a place to sleep, but what else could it be called when none of them were allowed to leave? There was even a mile-high wall that surrounded the town, from the pleasure district to the labor district, and it loomed, sucking in the neon from the speakeasies like an abyss in the air.

There was no escaping this place, whatever this place was. All Newt knew for certain was that he wasn’t supposed to be here.

He covered his name and tried to repeat it without looking at the paper, like a student preparing for a test. The only name that popped into his head wasn’t even his, not that he minded. It was the last thing that could bring some semblance of joy to his life.

“What’s that you have there, brother?”

If there was a downside to living in a repurposed warehouse filled with twenty-four beds, it was that privacy was scarce. Usually, this wouldn’t be a problem. Everyone was dead-tired after shifts, sinking into a dreamless sleep as soon as their heads hit the pillow, but the man at Newt’s shoulder clearly had some energy to spare.

_Excuse me,_ Newt tried to say with a look, _are you new?_

Unperturbed, the man in a tan shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows continued, “That’s your name, isn’t it?” He let out a soft whistle. “Hard to believe you’ve managed to hold onto it this long.” It was dangerous to be caught with anything that reminded them of their former lives, and deep down Newt was terrified that the man would report him to the Watcher, but it’d been such a long time since he’d had a genuine conversation with anyone, and he could see how the miners closeby shifted to listen better and hopefully catch a glimpse without drawing any attention to themselves. The glances were cautious, curious, and tentative. They were so used to looking down that even looking sideways took courage, so Newt gathered some of his own, and told the tale of the witchfinder, Thou-Shalt-Not-Commit-Adultery Pulsifer, and the witch that bested him.

From the beginning, a spark was lit in their eyes. The man beside him chuckled, shaking his head in disbelief, but Newt plunged ahead as though the words had a life of their own, describing a book with thousands of predictions that always came true, a young boy who couldn’t hold a cellphone without frying the battery, and a girl who’d known her whole life that she was destined to see the world end. There had been knowing smiles from the workers when he’d mentioned the boy and girl. Blushing furiously, Newt rushed to tell of Witchfinder Sergeant Shadwell, of aliens and men with wings and an antichrist who only wanted to steal apples and play with his friends and his dog in the yard.

It was a happy ending if it ended there, and if it were up to Newt it would have, but the man beside him crossed his arms over his chest, humming thoughtfully, “And what happened to the Witchfinder Private and the witch?” He didn’t sound entirely convinced that the story was true, but seemed content to play into the fiction.

His mood plummeting, Newt solemnly shook his head, “He died. And she… well, I suppose she must have moved on.” See, they all thought it was disappointing. He could tell from the look in their eyes... Immediately, he’d wished he hadn’t said anything. For a moment, he’d caught what looked like a glimmer of happiness in their dull, tired gazes, and now it was gone. The last thing they’d needed was another tragedy.

So Newt tried again.

This time, he talked about picnics under the sun and the sweetness of stolen apples. He strayed away from fate and focused on love and courage in the face of impossible, indescribable odds. And a girl who’d known his name without asking, who loved every one of Earth’s flying, swimming, crawling creatures with her whole heart, and couldn’t make a decent cup of coffee to save any of them. Telling them, sharing what he knew, was like entrusting a piece of himself to them — the most important piece.

He hoped they would remember the feeling of grass brushing against their ankles, a warm blanket on a hot summer day, the sound of children laughing somewhere beyond the trees. This way, when the drudgery of their work and the bleakness of the scenery took its toll, these small precious moments wouldn’t disappear.

Afterwards, when there were dozens of bodies crowded around him, huddled on the floor, listening even though all the words were spent, he felt hollow. Scooped out and empty. He’d given everything left until there was nothing left to give. His audience of lost souls needed something to hold onto. With his knees pulled to his chest and a crumpled up slip of paper in his hand that he was half-tempted to dash into the dirt, to take a match to its edges until they crumpled and blackened and burned, he didn’t feel like much of a hero. His bones ached from lying on a cot as hard as concrete and his muscles screamed constantly from overexertion. Dust coated him from head to toe, coal spotted his lungs, tears streaked his cheeks, cutting a path through layers of caked-on grime to trail down his neck.

This was true of all of them — broken and lonely and forgotten. Damaged beyond repair. They didn’t wait when there was no one coming. They let themselves forget when the pain of remembering became unbearable.

It would have been so much easier if he could just forget his name. Had Newton Pulsifer not been so intrinsically tied to Anathema Device, for centuries and centuries, since before either of them had been born, he might have let it slip away with the scent of cinnamon, the crashing of waves at the beach. But he’d spent a lifetime with a cursed touch, a touch that fried hard drives, wiped servers, shut down monitors, short-circuited breakers, and with that an enduring love for technology that taught him persistence.

He would be patient. He would wait.

Biding one’s time was _not_ surrender.

Although Newt had never thought of himself as much of a public speaker, the dozen or so wide-eyed faces, too thin and too young, had listened to what must have sounded like a fantasy with rapt attention, the spell only interrupted by the sound of tiny claws scraping against the concrete floor. A girl with plaited hair jumped atop her bed, pointing frantically at the ground, while the foreman stood up with a groan. Apparently, in lieu of a cat, one of the foreman’s responsibilities had become taking care of the pests, which he accepted with quiet nobility as he trudged over to peer under her cot.

There was a frantic squeaking, a brief scuffle, and the foreman was pulling out a rat by its tail.

It whimpered pathetically as it dangled, looking pitiful.

The foreman didn’t seem entirely unsympathetic to its plight, but whatever compassion he might have felt for the creature wouldn’t have saved it from being dashed against a nearby stone had there not been a timely intervention from the rafters above, “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.” As one, the worker’s heads snapped to the ceiling where a pair of serpentine eyes glowed dangerously from out of the shadows. “That magnificent rodent happens to be a friend of mine.” The rat squirmed in the foreman’s grasp, swinging back and forth in a panic. The figure sighed at the display, “No, I’m not going to eat you. Does no one read the conditions clause of their contracts, anymore?” Nonplussed, the foreman released the rather large rat, which chattered at him indignantly for a moment before scurrying through a small hole in the wall.

None of the women appeared to be pleased with this development.

There was a snap and light flooded the corner where Crowley casually lounged across a beam. He lifted his head to tip his hat to Newt, who’d already leapt to his feet, hands balled into shaking fists at his sides. Before he could really get started on just how much he’d enjoyed the demon’s disappearing act, the worker closest to him squeezed his shoulder in warning, and the foreman stepped forward, “What brings you to our barracks, Lord?” Though it was hard to tell, Newt thought he might have seen Crowley react to the formal address with a pained grimace. “It’s after hours now, but we’ll be back to work on the mine after a short rest.”

“Oh, I know,” Crowley drawled, waving off his words. “You work on the mine to harvest coal for the factories, the factories keep the lights on, and keeping the lights on lets those who live on the upper side of town engage in neverending merriment while you lot break your backs mining more coal. Tell me, why do you work for them? Is it to keep poverty away because, not to be rude or anything,” and he gestured to the hard moth-bitten cots, steel columns, and stone floors, “you’re not exactly living in the lap of luxury here.”

“With all due respect,” the foreman spoke gently, as though he suspected their lord may be more than a little unhinged, “we don’t work for those folks. We work for you.”

“But what’s the point of it all? Why do you stay here? Why not pack up and go somewhere else, preferably somewhere with mandatory lunch breaks and higher wages?” A leading question. Crowley knew damn well why none of them ever tried to leave. He just wanted to hear them say it.

“The wall -”

“And who built the wall?” Crowley snapped. “You all did, didn’t you? You built the wall that keeps you trapped here, you keep the electricity running, so tell me my dutiful workers — what would happen if you just... stopped... working?” With that, a seed that had already been planted began to flourish. Crowley jumped to his feet, ducking his head so that it didn’t brush against the ceiling, then stepped off the beam, drawing a startled gasp from the crowd. Instead of falling, the soles of his snakeskin shoes clung to the sides and he swung to stand on the bottom. “I’ll leave you to think on it. After all, you only have forever.”

He raised his fingers to snap, but before he could pull another vanishing act, Newt demanded, “Are you just going to leave me here again?” The foreman glanced sharply at him. At the same time, the man Newt had been speaking to before edged between him and Crowley’s direct line-of-sight.

The demon observed both of these actions with a raised brow and a wry smirk, then shook his head, lifting his hands in a helpless gesture,“S’ not my fault you can’t keep your mouth shut to save your life.” There was a brief pause. “Or is it afterlife? Hm. Not entirely clear on that one. Anyway, everything would have gone much more smoothly if you didn’t keep sticking your neck out like you think you’re Heracles or something.” His gaze flitted over the protective stances of Newt’s companions. “Of course, maybe that’s not such a bad thing.”

His form had grown translucent and indistinct as he spoke, legs and arms and torso melding with the scenery. The last part of him to go were his lambent eyes, which stared straight at Newt and were met unflinchingly until even they winked out like extinguished stars, leaving the workers in the dark once more.

‘What a strange God,” the foreman muttered. There was unvoiced discontent in the air, a stirring of something started, but for now, he was content to crawl back into bed.

Not everyone was ready to rest, however. Those who had listened to Newt speak regarded him eagerly. He didn’t quite understand, at first, not until the worker who’d started all this with a simple question clapped him jovially on the back.

“Care to tell us your story again, lover boy?” Newt flushed, heat creeping up his neck. Suddenly weak at the knees, he plopped onto his cot, then after a beat, sucked down a deep breath, and with dozens of faces turned towards him like buds of blue iris growing towards the sunlight, began to tell his story once more.

Aziraphale had hoped that the train would let them off in the town beyond the wall.

However, as was often the case whenever hope was involved, he was disappointed. The train slowed to a gradual stop, whereupon the conductor guided them to the exit, letting them step onto dirt and gravel before starting the engine back up and continuing along the track without them. It would seem that even with miracled tickets, Charon could be counted on to take them to their destination, but not to grant them entrance. If they were going inside, it would have to be under their own power, as was often the way with trials.

Crowley wouldn’t have had the patience for these games. He’d always been the type to drive his Bentley through a hedge maze. Not for the first time, Aziraphale wished for his presence, though he supposed that would rather defeat the purpose of coming down to Hadestown in the first place.

The wall surrounding the town was an impressive feat of construction. It consisted mostly of stones of different shapes and colors stacked one after another, held together with mortar and stretching towards the surface as the Tower of Babel had once stretched toward Heaven. Vines grew from cracks and fissures in the stone, weaving in and out and in again like a thread. They would weaken the wall in time, but for now, their thorny stems made it exceptionally difficult to climb without ripping one’s palms on their sharp points.

Aziraphale observed as Anathema studied the structure, no doubt calculating her chances of success. Hands clasped behind his back, he started moving in a deliberately casual half-circle around her, keeping an eye on their surroundings. She arched a delicate brow at the gesture, “What are you doing?”

“Oh! I was just…” Aziraphale’s hands fluttered. “Well, you see, the thing is…” A gusty sigh escaped him. “It was nothing, really. Just stretching my legs.”

If they extended their necks, tilting their heads back to the point just shy of pain, they could just make out the top of the looming monstrosity that wrapped around the town.

Bracing himself, Aziraphale pressed a hand against the blood-red stone and was immediately overwhelmed by the anguish which crashed against his mental wards, buffeting them like a battering ram. He rocked onto his heels, sucking in a sharp breath, and withdrew.

Anathema’s brow furrowed, “What was that? What happened to you just then?”

It’s said that four-hundred thousand workers died building the Great Wall of China, and their bodies were rumored to have been buried in its foundation. If those workers were forced to continue building the wall in death as they had in life, Aziraphale imagined that the dirt, stone, lime, and wood of the construction would have absorbed desperation and despair to a degree which would only be rivaled by what roiled within the structure in front of them now. The negative energy was so concentrated it seemed to have taken on a life of its own, malevolent and hostile and unwelcoming of intruders.

This was what made Aziraphale hesitate. If it were any other wall, he might have attempted to fly over it, yet the moment he thought to try, the entity within the wall purred with anticipation. It would smack him down to the earth, tear his wings and render him flightless if it could.

Anathema must have sensed its intent, as well, because she stopped attempting to search for foot and handholds, casting the cracks in the stones and mortar that looked so appealing a wary glance. With a hand cupped around her mouth, she bent down, leaning in close, and whispered into the tantalizing spaces, “You have something of mine.” She paused as though to listen, her head tilted, eyes closed. “We have come a very long way to get here, and have passed every trial the Underworld has thrown at us. Now, all I want is for you to let Newton Pulsifer and the demon known as Crowley go. They are not yours to keep.” Gratitude welled within Aziraphale, a warmth that did much to replenish his spirits in spite of the strain Hades was placing on his Grace. Running her fingers over the stone, she smiled coldly, “Whatever you are, however ancient or cruel, you should know better than to steal from a witch.”

There was a moment of preternatural silence, followed by a low rumble that dislodged jagged rocks that pelted down upon their unprotected heads. Anathema hissed out a breath, shielding herself with her arms to fend off the worst of it. “Right. Threats aren’t going to work with this thing.” Her gaze fell on Aziraphale. “I think you should sing to it.”

Aziraphale made an indignant noise. “Oh! Not this nonsense again. For the last time, I’m not that kind of angel! I wasn’t created to sing harmonies in Her heavenly choir. I was meant to be a soldier!” A soldier wouldn’t help them, though, for what faced them now was a trial, a challenge, and such could not be resolved with brute-force. Anathema had enough respect for magic and myth to know that cutting your way through a labyrinth was missing the point. You couldn’t beat the maze if you didn’t play by the rules, and there were no rewards for cheaters. And, besides, hadn’t the walls once wept for the song of a poet?

“I know,” she muttered. “I know you don’t want to... But what’s the worst that could happen if you try?”

In fact, there were many bad things that could happen if an angelic being unleashed the full force of their Grace with a human nearby. To add to that, doing so when they were so close to Hell would be far too reckless. For all that the Damned were denied Her Grace, they would be drawn to it like moths to a flame. However, could Aziraphale truly call himself an angel if he didn’t do everything within his capabilities to do the right thing?

After so many thousands of years attempting to achieve what was Good, perhaps some good old-fashioned heroics was exactly what the doctor ordered.

He and Crowley both owed the boy for his part in stopping the Apocalypse, and if Crowley was truly trapped within the confines of this wall, then it wasn’t as though there was any choice left but to overcome this obstacle and move forward.

Without moving his lips or uttering a sound, a melody began to pour forth from the angel, and his aura expanded, surrounding him in an ethereal glow as the air hummed with the power of his Grace. Its notes clung like dewdrops, its highs crisp and clean as a gust of wind on a mountaintop, its lows comforting and warm as a fireplace and a cup of chamomile tea.

Anathema could feel herself being lulled into a trance and clapped her hands over her ears, shutting out the sound until the angel’s aura dimmed, and he glanced at her sheepishly. The winding, twisting song had reached its conclusion, and the wall remained unmoved.

This wasn’t the end.

Not only had Anathema seen the End, she had helped put a stop to it, so she thought it fair to say she was something of an expert on the subject, and this? One measly wall?

In a pique of frustration, Anathema kicked at the wall, and was promptly rewarded with a throbbing pain in her toes to join the burgeoning ache in her temples. She squeezed her eyes shut, willing her racing heart to slow as she took several calming breaths. It was a shame there wasn’t any pottery around to shatter.

_That_ usually did wonders for stress relief.

In the Underworld, life was currency. It was the only thing worthy of any value, which was why they bet on it, bartered it, and signed it away. And what was life if not a story? Orpheus hadn’t touched Hades and Persephone with the quality of his singing. He’d reached them with the story he’d told.

The story of their love.

Anathema laid a hand on the wall, feeling the cool stones beneath her palm. Her nails scraped against the mortar. “You want a story? Is that it?” She turned to the angel with an idea, “How did you say you met your friend again?”

“Oh no, he’s not my—” Aziraphale blurted reflexively, before cutting himself off. “I suppose we’re rather past that, aren’t we?”

“Between getting on the plane and playing fetch with Cerberus for his sake,” though unsure if her touch would be welcome, she placed a reassuring hand on his sleeve, “I think plausible deniability may have gone out the window.”

“Even so,” the angel cast her a rueful smile, “it is rather difficult to let go of after all this time.” The hand resting on Aziraphale’s sleeve gave a small squeeze.

Though he was unaffected by the sweltering heat of the Underground, Anathema found that her layers of skirts were growing heavier by the minute. With a sigh, she unwrapped a hair tie from around her wrist and tied her hair back, then unfastened the topmost buttons of her collar. It offered little relief, but she pursed her lips, deciding there was little more she could do short of a full wardrobe change. In the background, the window lights from the railroad town behind them twinkled prettily. Invitingly.

If they turned back now, there was a very good chance they would never be able to find this wall again. She couldn’t even imagine the long trip home, the days and nights of wondering what could have happened if they’d only been braver, smarter, more determined.

“A chapter of our lives ended that day on the airbase,” she started slowly. “That’s a scary thought for everyone... but the only way to find out what happens next is to move forward. Newton helped me find the courage to live my life without any prophecies to decipher. Now, I can finally learn what it’s like to be myself, and I want nothing more than for him to be there by side when I find out because I love him, and not because any book or centuries-old witch told me I should or would or whatever!” Unbeknownst to them, the cracks and fissures in the wall were already beginning to expand as it listened. “I love Newton Pulsifer, the greatest witchfinder alive, and I’m not going to let distance or obstacles stop me from finding him again.” Her intense gaze, dark and inscrutable, bore into him. “So I’ll ask again — How did you meet your friend?”

Aziraphale regarded her for a moment with something akin to awe, then nodded his gratitude. After adjusting his bowtie and flattening out his waistcoat, the angel gave himself a slight shake, took a deep fortifying breath, and said, “We met in the Garden of Eden. I was fretting and second-guessing myself over an action I had taken, no matter how well-intentioned it may have been, and he climbed up beside me and he,” there was a pause as the memory of laughter replayed in his mind, the crinkle around Crowley's eyes that made their golden irises shine like the dawn, “was _kind._ ” When the statement when unprotested, Aziraphale noted that there were some advantages to the Serpent’s absence, though he vastly preferred his presence, regardless. “Whatever he is to me, whatever I am to him, I’m not about to let it end now.”

He could count on one hand the number of times he’d allowed himself to be honest. Fear was a powerful motivator for deception, after all. It was freeing, however, to stand before all of Hades and declare that an Arrangement spanning centuries was not so easily broken, and a relationship formed at the dawn of a new world would not reach its end here. There were more duck ponds in their future, more visits to the Ritz, more delightful bakeries, more customers for Crowley to frighten away from his bookshop.

Hades could not keep nor Fate control what Heaven nor Hell could contain.

Aziraphale straightened to his full height, smoothed his lapels, then with a fire blazing within him that outdid the flames of any Heaven-mandated weapon declared, “I am taking Crowley home with me.” Clean, pure tears fell from the crevices in the wall, streaming down the stones in crystal-clear rivulets. The mortar crumbled away as the rocks turned inwards to form a gap large enough to let them pass, bringing them ever closer to the end of their tale.

The warehouse shutter doors were thrown open in the morning and the Watcher stormed in, her hands clasped behind her back and a scowl etched into the hard lines of her face. She stalked through the barracks like a vulture, eagerly searching for any hint of weakness. Newt tore off his moth-bitten sheets as he scrambled to stand at attention, distantly aware of the others pulling on gray shirts, overalls, and goggles while he desperately coaxed his sore and aching limbs into movement.

There was no telling how long the Watcher let them rest for, only that the duration seemed to be growing shorter and farther between. Newt was ghostly pale when he’d first arrived and stood out like laughter at a funeral due to his patently English complexion, which made it no surprise when she stopped in front of his cot to scrutinize his appearance, scoffing at the shoulder clasps which hung loosely off his shoulders.

He didn’t know what she was waiting for. Was it for him to break down? Submit? Did she want to become a mindless cog in their coal mining, wall-building, oil drilling machine?

To be honest, Newt didn’t know how much longer he could hold out for, especially if his memories from when he was alive continued to fade, but there was one thing he could be sure of, and that was that the day he surrendered, the day he gave in…

It wasn’t today.

Straightening his spine, Newt stared unflinchingly ahead. He didn’t meet her eyes, nor did he let her see how the hands clasped behind his back trembled with vestiges of fatigue and an ever-flowing well of terror. Ever since he’d woken up in this place, he had never stopped being afraid, but contrary to his own belief, this did not mean he could not be brave.

His fellow workers had seen his better nature win out time and time again. They had witnessed how he risked the lash to protest the unfairness of their punishments, had watched in awe as he clung to the past even when water drawn from the Lethe flushed his veins. This morning, the atmosphere in the warehouse was in possession of an energy and purpose that brightened their eyes, brought splashes of color to their cheeks. Those who have experienced the taut anticipation characteristic of brewing revolution might have recognized the danger present, but even then, it was too late to stop what had been put into motion by a story.

They were marched to the coal mine, heads bowed and silent, as they were every morning. The heat pressed in from all sides to draw the moisture from their bodies so that each of them bore a sheen of sweat on their lean, muscled figures before their hands could reach to grip the handle of a pickaxe. Newt fell into the rhythm with the thoughtless mechanics of repetition. The goggles kept flying shards from flying into his eyes as he cut and scraped and crushed. Soon, smears of coal dust streaked across his chest, over his arms, winding up his neck and coating his face with brush-stroke gradients. His cough was a wet rattling thing rooted deep in his lungs, and he lifted a bandanna over his mouth to keep out the worst of it, more focused on remaining upright and standing than on sneaking glances at his fellow workers in the mine. Curiosity, really, had been the first thing to go.

Had he lifted his head to check, however, he might have noticed a change.

For, you see, the workers were _awake._ In the truest sense of the word.

All it took was a spark. All it took was a chance.

There was a splintering crack from the pickaxe clutched in Newt’s hands, and the handle snapped. Wood fragments embedded themselves in his palms, blood beading from the punctures. He stared, stunned, at the wounds. Barely even registering the pain before he was roughly grabbed by the collar and hauled outside the mouth of the cave. “Think you can destroy your tool, do you? Think that will make a difference?” The Watched sneered in his ear, her breath hot against the skin. “That tool of yours worked harder than you ever have, and that’s why it's broken.” It wasn’t even about the axe head. Not really. Newt bit his lip, conscious of the weight of her hand pressing his head down to the dirt, and bracing for the fiery, agonizing sting that was to come, as she growled with a note of finality, raising the whip high, “You should try learning from its example.”

The leather should have ripped into him. He should have been screaming, but the pain never came.

Cautiously, Newt opened his eyes to see the foreman had twisted the tail-end of the whip around his forearm and with a yank, he tore it loose from the Watcher’s grasp. The others stopped working to watch, their pickaxes hanging at their sides, something like hope in their eyes. The foreman inclined his head towards the worker Newt had spoken to last night. He grinned, a rarity in the Underground, and let his pickaxe fall to the ground. One by one, dozens more followed suit until the white-dust ground was littered with them, and the men and women stood tall, their backs straight and their spirits free.

Keeping his eyes on the Watcher, whose hatred burned and consumed her, the foreman declared, “We are not your slaves anymore. Power your own city. Build your own wall.” Then he helped lift Newt to his feet, steadying him when he staggered.

Liberation. It soared through the crowd, taking them on its wings, and with a single gesture, the workers walked out of the mine. The Watcher screamed and shrieked and threatened, but they were beyond her now. She couldn’t reach them.

A shadow flitted through the spaces between the bodies, unremarked and unseen. It rose behind Newt, reforming into a man-shaped being seconds before slapping a hand over his mouth, dragging him into the factory, and once they were out of sight, letting him go.

Newt tore away from him with a strangled shout. Dry-mouthed and chilled in spite of the heat, he could hear the blood rushing through his ears. Gradually, his racing heart stopped trying to gallop away and he recognized Crowley. The gleaming scales that had dotted his skin before now consumed the majority of his face, as though his body were no longer quite sure whether it was meant to be human or reptile. His habit of swaying where he stood had become even more pronounced, and the white tips of fangs protruded from his upper lip.

For the time being, Newt’s well-earned suspicion was superseded by a rush of concern, “What’s happening to you?”

Crowley grunted. “It’s nothing.” A glimpse of his wrist could be seen when he waved off the question. Every inch of exposed skin was covered with scales. “Unimportant. Now, come on, no more questions. There’s something I need you to do.” Instead of following further into the factory, back from where they’d come at the start, Newt stubbornly held his ground.

“Why should I go anywhere with you, _Lord?_ ” The demon winced at the acid with which he spat the title. “You think giving me my name on a slip of paper makes up for the absolute hell you’ve put me through these past weeks? How do I know you’re not going to lock me up or trick me or—”

Surging forward, Crowley shoved him up against the pipes and Newt cried out, flinching from the heat of the pipes pressed against his back. “Because if you don’t trust me now - one last time - you’re never going to see book girl again.” His expression softened. “She’s here, you know. In Hadestown.”

And hope bloomed once more in the Underworld.

“Anathema?” Newt breathed, his heart skipping a beat. He felt giddy. Light-headed. “I can’t believe she came for me.”

“Sure did,” Crowley eagerly assured him, desperation seeping from the edges. “And I’ll take you to her, but we’ll have to hurry. A mass strike like this one doesn’t happen every day, you know, and somebody’s bound to notice.” Thus, the pair descended into the depths of the factory, leaving mines and walls and sweat and fear in search of telephone lines and wires.

There were cellular towers behind the factory, rows and rows of them. Each of them hooked into the power grid. Crowley looked up the tower with a feral grin, a glint of madness in his eyes, “This tower looks broken to me. Does it look broken to you?” It was working perfectly, but Newt could already guess where this was heading, though not how Crowley could have known. “You definitely shouldn’t try fixing it,” he added cheerily. “I’d have to kill you if you did.” And then, pointedly, he started sauntering away.

Newt’s hand hovered over the cross-shaped metal beams. He called after the demon’s retreating back, “What will happen to you if I do this thing you don’t want me to do?”

Crowley stopped in his tracks. “Does it matter?”

“It matters to me. Yes.”

The demon’s hands twitched at his sides. He hooked his thumbs into his pockets. When he spoke, it was with a weight he hadn’t possessed before. Atlas carrying the world. “You can’t save what’s already lost. Can’t find what’s already gone.” One of his shoulders hiked in a jerky shrug. “Kid, I’m already done for. You should focus on saving yourself.”

“Come with me,” Newt pleaded. “We’ll escape together. There’s no reason for you to stay here.”

“Humans,” Crowley muttered fondly, almost as though he were speaking to himself, or perhaps to someone who wasn’t present, but when he turned his lamplight gaze on Newt, it was filled, not with madness, but unmistakable pride. “Always full of surprises, you are.”

And Newt thought, for a brief, shining moment, that he’d convinced the demon to stay. He slammed his palm against the base of the cell tower, and the antennae sparked a flame that leapt from one tower to the next, snuffing out the signal, interrupting the flow of power until the town and its neon lights were snuffed out.

Grinning widely and high off his triumph, Newt pumped a fist into the air. “We did it! Crowley, we—” But when he turned to celebrate there was no one standing behind him in the dark, no footprints to follow, and the molten core of his victory cooled in his chest, disappointment and hurt aching like a stone lodged between his bones.

Whatever Aziraphale and Anathema were expecting, it wasn’t to be ushered into a bar. There was a jazz band playing in the corner and round tables of mahogany where glasses filled with whiskey, gin, and vodka traced rings of ice water on their surfaces. Candles flickered over the counter, casting a warm welcoming light over the bar, which combined with the music, conversation, alcohol, and the scent of lotus blossoms lent the interior a drowsy, comfortable atmosphere.

Aziraphale had already cautioned Anathema against partaking in any food or drink on the train, though he needn’t have. Anathema knew better than to consume the fruits of the Underworld, and so they occupied their time by asking after the objects of their search. Here, at the end of their journey, surrounded by revelry, women dressed in lace and ruffles, and dancing, they felt no closer to their destination. They each sat down on a stool, their hands clasped in front of them as they planned their next move.

“No one here has seen Newt,” Anathema said, toying with the cup of water the bartender had poured for her, though she had no intention of drinking it. She pressed her forehead to her knuckles and frowned, her brow furrowed. “I thought I didn’t need Agnes’ prophecies to be happy. I thought I could protect him.” Her dark brown eyes shone wetly. “What if we can’t find him? What if he’s trapped here?”

Aziraphale weighed his words carefully. “It’s very... human, I think. To blame yourselves for circumstances over which you have no control.” This earned him a half-hearted glare, though the angel took it with good humor. He flashed her a secretive smile. “It’s not a bad thing to be. Human, that is.”

Anathema sighed. “With a name like mine, some would say I was born a curse.”

“They would be wrong,” Aziraphale gently replied. “Unfortunately, the freedom to choose often means the freedom to choose unwisely. I did not, however, fancy young Newton the type to judge preemptively.” Shaking her head, Anathema bit back a smile.

She leaned forward, waving over the bartender. “Hello, Miss?” The woman with dried asphodel blossoms in her hair strolled over. “We’re new around here,” Anathema confided, though she knew it was a risk. “Could you please tell us the best way to leave Hadestown?”

“Only the Lady of the Underground can come and go as she pleases,” the bartender said with a frown. “For the rest of us, it’s a one-way trip, I’m afraid.” With a cruel curve to her lips, she winked, “I hope you enjoy your stay,” and then sashayed away to take the order of one of her other patrons. It truly was a shame that taking part in any of the food or drink around them would be such a colossally bad idea, because Anathema could really go for a Bloody Mary right about now.

For all that their information gathering venture hadn’t turned up anything they could use, Aziraphale’s sunny disposition hadn’t faltered. At this point, she couldn’t tell if he was deliberately behaving this way to fit the general idea of how an angel should be, or if this was just how Aziraphale was naturally. “It sounds to me, Miss Device, like this town is in need of a good old-fashioned miracle.” He climbed down from the stool, poised to snap his fingers, and then —

The fluorescent and neon lights in the bar popped, throwing them all into darkness.

Aziraphale blinked. “That was most assuredly _not_ of my doing.”

However, Anathema knew exactly who could short out an entire town’s worth of electricity and she was sprinting out the door, on her way to the factories before the filaments in the bulbs had completely lost their glow.

Newt stood at the foot of the cell tower in a daze. He didn’t know where to go from here. Anathema could be anywhere, and the only hope he’d had of finding her before he was caught and dragged back into the mine had vanished into the ether. Again.

He’d thought… He’d thought they’d come to an understanding of sorts.

Crowley didn’t want to stay in this place, did he?

Thinking back to their conversation, Newt struggled to remember if he’d called whatever-Crowley-was by name. He had, hadn’t he? Had Crowley forgotten it again? He’d mentioned something about that when they’d met in the boiler room.

_Don’t let them take it from you._

And the Watcher had tried. The Watcher and the mining and the toil, the sweat and the grime. But Newt had read and reread his name every night, sounded it out and repeated it back to himself until sleep claimed him. Surrounded by people who referred to him as Lord, who reminded Crowley of who he was? Of the life he’d once had?

Shouts could be heard in the distance as word of the strike spread. The workers wouldn’t be hindered in their march by the power outage. They’d been living in the shadows for too long to be hindered by the shroud of darkness now. As Newt watched, fearful for his friends, a torch flickered to life. Soon, it was joined by dozens more, each of them communicating the same message:

Here. Safe. Free.

Standing there as witness, Newt could have wept. Instead, he rolled up his sleeves and set his jaw, determined to find the idiot that had helped make this all possible and drag him kicking and screaming up to the surface if that was what it took. First, though, he had to find—

“Newt!”

Before he had time to wonder, to doubt, to brace, a pair of firm, slender arms threw themselves around his shoulders, with sleeves that smelled of lavender incense and primrose. A comfortable weight pressed between his shoulder blades, into the space that was made perfectly for her. It’s all so familiar that his dead, cold heart squeezed painfully in his chest.

Dreams had rarely visited him in Hadestown. One advantage to perpetual exhaustion was that sleep tended to be blissfully uneventful, yet once or twice he had heard her calling him, felt her so close behind him that when he dared to turn, the disappointment of finding nothing had struck him like a blade. Even so, he would have weathered a thousand daggers, died a thousand deaths, for an illusion as beautiful as this one.

“Anathema,” her name was pulled out him, reverent and carrying every raw, exposed inch of him, “if you’re not really here with me, tell me now. Otherwise, I don’t think I could survive it.”

She rested her chin on his shoulder, “It’s me.” Two words. Those two words, strained and close to breaking, could dismantle the last defense Newt had. A shiver wracked his frame and the grip she had on him tightened. “I’m sorry it took so long to find you.”

It didn’t matter. None of it mattered.

Suddenly, the thought of not seeing her for one more second was a torment he couldn’t contemplate. He gently loosened her limbs and turned around, still encircled in her arms, and there she stood in front of him, whole and real and tangible. “It’s you,” Newt rasped, pulling her into an embrace and burying his face in her dark curls. His eyes itched and ached. His body trembled. Murmuring reassurances in his ear, she rubbed soothing circles over his back, and he pressed kisses to the trail of tears on her cheeks, tasting salt on his tongue.

It was as though the Anathema that had existed in his memory had been a blurred watercolor painting, faded and indistinct, and now it burst into vibrancy and focus.

She placed her hands on either side of his face and stared into his eyes. “We’re going to get you out of here, okay?” He believed her. He believed _in_ her. From the moment he’d woken up in her cottage, Newt had resigned himself to the fact that he would follow Anathema Device to the ends of the earth. She relaxed, visibly relieved by how his trust in her had gone unbroken, then gestured towards the factory, where a figure in a cream-colored waistcoat stepped out from behind the corner, “You remember Aziraphale, don’t you? He’s an angel.”

Not so long ago, this information would have surprised him.

Though exhausted, Newt greeted the angel with a polite nod, “You’re looking for Crowley, aren’t you?”

Aziraphale brightened. “Yes, indeed! It heartens me to see you well, Newton. Miss Device was quite worried about your welfare.” Anathema rolled her eyes with a hint of a smile. “Would you happen to know where I can find him?”

Squaring his shoulders, Newt reluctantly let go of Anathema, cutting their embrace short by an eternity, though their fingers entwined, neither of them willing to end the contact entirely. “I don’t know where Crowley is now,” he said firmly. “But I’ll help you find him.”

Shortly after their search began, the three of them were captured by an overseer, then dragged to the throne of Hades to face judgment for their insubordination. It might have even been amusing how quickly they were spotted if Newt hadn’t been driven nearly out of his mind with panic. Aziraphale, on the other hand, didn’t appear overly concerned as they were marched through the fields, over paved sidewalks and roads, past the restaurants and bars where those favored by the ruler of Hadestown frequented.

Newt could barely think, let alone speak. His mind played out scenarios that pooled ink-black dread in his veins. Anathema curled her fingers around his wrists.

“Breathe with me,” she whispered, and he struggled to match her pace, slow and steady and calm. It was enough to banish the spots from his vision, and as his lurching strides evened out, he stood straighter. It wasn't that he was less afraid or suddenly feeling braver, merely that there were things more important than his fear. There was no way of knowing if they’d have a future or even a tomorrow, but Anathema was still alive. As long as she was alive, Newt knew he would never stop fighting to get her back to the surface.

Even if that meant he had to let her go.

Having been watching him closely, Anathema narrowed her eyes, her mouth pressing into a thin, unhappy line. “If you’re thinking about doing something stupidly heroic, you better forget it. I chose to come down here to save you and that’s what I’m going to do.” At this point, Newt couldn’t tell if the rush of warmth within him at her words was love or frustration. Most likely, it was a mixture of both.

They were led into an amphitheatre modeled after the Colosseum in Rome. It had been built with limestone, volcanic rock, and onyx to give the high walls and rows of empty benches a gleaming black surface. Although, given where they were standing it was highly probable that the Roman stadium had been modeled after the architectural accomplishments of Hades. Naturally, there were no statues of Nero or Apollo standing within. Instead, there were a pair of thrones carved into pedestals. One was carved with images of Spring. Elegant vines curved around the back and armrests, the leaves stretching from their stems plated with gold and bronze.

The opposite throne was larger, broader, and decorated with obsidian. Branches of crystal spread through the black stone, giving the impression of a leafless tree, frozen and dead.

The thrones should have been empty. The rulers were gone.

One of them, however, was not.

Crowley stared impassively down at the whole of the arena from the throne of Hades. His hat was nowhere to be seen, replaced by an intricate crown that wept a slick tar-like substance over his forehead and down the sides of his face. At the foot of his pedestal, several of the captured workers had been forced to their knees with their hands tied behind their backs. Newt instantly recognized three of them from his mining group, including the foreman and the girl with plaited hair. She glared up at Crowley with her teeth bared, her jaw set in defiance.

Going by the lack of reaction from their so-called Lord, it was difficult to tell if he even noticed her blatant rebellion, let alone cared. If anything, he appeared to be supremely bored with the proceedings.

“Greetings, Guardian of the Eastern Gate,” Crowley announced with grand affectation and a flourish, as though he were merely acting out the role of a villain in a play. Newt turned to see Aziraphale had pressed his hands to his mouth in silent horror, his gaze fixed on the fully golden serpent eyes, the patches of black scales, and the crown of corruption coating his fire-red hair with oil. “I’ve heard that you were seeking audience with the Lord of this land. Unfortunately, he’s not available at the moment, so I will have to do. You’ve picked quite the bad time, what with the workmen’s strike going on and quelling insurrection and all that, so I’d suggest you make it quick. What was it you wished to discuss?”

Anathema stepped forward. “We wish only for the release of Newton Pulsifer.”

“He is one of my workers,” Crowley replied affably. Behind his throne, the hem of a wispy spider thread dress came briefly into sight. The demon cocked his head, listening to voices none else could hear, a smirk playing on his lips. “Unfortunately, I cannot simply let him go.” His gaze fell on Aziraphale, shifting towards genuine regret. “Not even if you ask it of me.”

“Did he ever sign a contract?” Anathema demanded.

Resting his chin in his hands, Crowley slowly shook his head. “No, he did not.” Oddly, he didn’t appear at all reluctant to admit it. If anything, he looked impressed by how quickly she’d spotted the loophole. “Even so, if I release him, the others will see me as little more than a pushover, so there’ll have to be conditions. Personally,” a feral grin twisted his razor-edge features, “I’m a fan of the classics.”

The conditions were simple. Anathema would follow the railroad tracks to the surface, and Newt would walk ten paces behind. She wouldn’t be able to hear him, and if she turned around before stepping foot out of the Underworld, he would be dragged straight back to Hadestown, and she would be banished. There would be no second chances.

“You’re asking me to trust you,” she said. It wasn’t a question. “How do I know this isn’t a trick? You could be setting me up for failure for all I know.”

“That’s what makes it a test, book girl. If it were easy, humans would be walking out of the Underworld in droves every day. If he can make it topside,” Newt tensed, “then one who was trapped here will leave, and he will be free. Those are your terms. Now,” the demon leaned eagerly forward, hands braced on his knees, “what do you say?”

When the silence stretched too long, Newt wondered why Anathema was hesitating, until he realized she was waiting for his input. She wasn’t going to agree on his behalf, which was just another addition to the long list of reasons why he loved her. Still, he could tell from the look in her eyes that she wanted him to agree. It would be so easy to take the deal, walk away and never look back, but not easy enough, because Newt couldn’t do it.

“What about the others?” He swept a hand out, gesturing to the workers chained and forced to kneel. “I want to know what you’re going to do to them.”

With a nervous glance at Crowley, Anathema stepped closer to him, pitching her voice low, “This isn’t the time to be a hero.” Hardly believing what she was saying, Newt subtly shook his head. Dismay and desperation gripped her. “Newt, please, we can figure something out after I get you home.”

If she asked again, he might not be able to deny her. In a perfect world, he wouldn’t deny her anything. There was a plea on her lips when he bent down and pressed his mouth against hers, taking the plea into himself and swallowing it down. Time seemed to stop, giving them the chance to hold on to this moment for as long as they needed, before Newt pulled away, brushing a thumb over the tears clinging to Anathema’s lashes like dew.

“There’s never a right or wrong time to be a hero. Or did you forget who taught the Antichrist the importance of preserving the whales?” He let out a rusty chuckle when she grimaced at the memory, and gently tucked a flyaway strand of hair behind her ear and cupped her cheek. “You saved the world and you didn’t even know you were doing it, so how can I walk away when there are people I can save right here in front of me?”

"I would ask when you became so brave but,” she laughed a bit shakily, her hand resting on his chest, “this is hardly a new development.”

Above their heads came a finger snap that carried like a sonic boom, and the chains shackling the workers fell away. “They can follow if they wish,” Crowley said casually. “Not just them, but any of the workers who are willing. It’s their gamble to make, really.”

This was his kindness, Newt realized. The mercy of a man trapped in a cage.

“Hades won’t be happy with you,” he cautioned, “if he comes back to find all his workers have gone.” This earned him a series of questioning looks from the workers and from Anathema, as well, but it wasn’t as though he was trying to convince Crowley to go back on his word. It was just that there was no reason for the demon to stay.

He’d already offered to take Crowley with him, and he was about to offer again when Anathema cut him off with a panicked, “We agree to your terms,” and before Newt could argue they were standing outside the wall, their feet planted on the railroad track.

Anathema was ten paces ahead. She couldn’t see Newt standing behind her, or the dozens of miners and builders and factory workers gathered behind him, but she squared her shoulders, set her jaw, and started the long, lonely walk down the tracks.

Only occult and ethereal beings remained in the colosseum now.

Aziraphale unfurled his powerful wings and beat them twice to gain momentum, kicking up a storm of dust and soil around him as did, then flew up to perch atop the Queen’s pedestal. From this angle, he could easily see the Fates that stood behind the King’s chair, with hollow cheeks, teeth thin and pointed as a spider's legs, and skeletal hands that pressed yellowed nails into Crowley’s neck and shoulders, pinning him to the throne.

“I remember loving you, Guardian.” At last, Crowley turned to look at him. “I think I loved you for a very long time.” His complexion was ashen beneath the oil streaking the sides of his face and scales, his golden eyes carrying within them every second he’d lived, from now until the dawn of time. He seemed exhausted, the scarlet scales circling his eyes giving off the semblance of red-rimmed and inflamed flesh, yet simultaneously apathetic towards the severity of his condition.

This unspoken thing between them had at last been given a name. It should have been the happiest day of Aziraphale’s life. Knowing that his feelings were returned should have buoyed him to the sky. Instead, he was weighed down by the farewell lurking within the words, the resignation to an end neither of them deserved.

Aziraphale crossed the space between the pedestals to kneel at Crowley’s side, daring the Fates to interfere. He clasped the hand closest to him between his own, sucking in a breath at its icy chill.

“When did you stop?”

Crowley peeled his collar away from his chest, revealing a patchwork of ropey scar tissue located directly over where his human heart would be. “It wasn’t by choice.”

The wound went deeper than his corporation, reaching into his essence, his core. Such a wound could take millennia to heal. The injury Aziraphale had received to his own essence during the war in Heaven had refused to recover completely, and it hadn’t even touched his core. He longed to imbue Crowley’s mutilated essence with healing Grace, the way he would have if such a grievous wound had been afflicted upon an angel, but Crowley was not an angel, and his Grace would destroy him.

Instead, Aziraphale brushed his fingers over the scar tissue with a gossamer touch, “Even after so much was taken, you still let young Newton and Miss Device go.”

Crowley shook his head. “I only let them try,” he corrected without feeling.

Following the demon’s gaze to the procession of humans on the tracks, Aziraphale rose to his feet. “We should go with them.”

Crowley glanced up at him in surprise. A bitter grin curled his lips. “Are you sure you want to let a heartless demon loose on those poor unsuspecting humans?” As soon as he finished speaking, the angel began swatting away at the wizened hands that bound him to the throne. One by one, the Fates retreated from Aziraphale’s persistent fussing, shrinking back from the holy light emanating from his form the way shadows do.

With his fists positioned firmly on his hips, the angel huffed at their departure, looking every inch the disgruntled farmer that had just swept a mouse from out of his barn. Once that was done, his expression shifted, becoming warm and adoring and so bright that Crowley could hardly believe it was meant for him. “You weren’t exactly evil before you learned to love me, my dear.”

Squinting into the light as his pupils shrank into needle-thin slashes, Crowley scoffed, “There was no me before I loved you.”

Hearing that, Aziraphale’s heart broke a little more. “I’ll look after you,” the angel insisted fiercely, taking up the demon’s hands between his own, clasping them tightly as though in prayer. The corners of his mouth twitched in an aborted motion, and he added with a touch of strained humor, “Make sure you don’t get into too much trouble. Same as always. For centuries, we’ve looked out for each other. I see absolutely no reason why that should change now.”

Crowley searched his face.

“Are you sure that’s what you want? It’s rotten work.”

A slow smile grew on Aziraphale’s cheeks at the sound of his name. “Not for me.” Mindful of the demon’s protruding claws, the angel gripped Crowley by the wrists and effortlessly lifted him off the infernal throne. “Not if it’s you.”

There was still time to catch up to the humans if they hurried. So long as they abided by the conditions Crowley had set, the wall would let them pass. Unfortunately, flying and miracles would go against the spirit of the trial, so they would have to exit the Underworld on foot with the rest.

When Crowley materialized his black wings in preparation for the short flight down, the Fates approached. “Hades will know of your betrayal,” they warned, heedless of Aziraphale’s rapidly dwindling patience. “He will tear every last drop of blood and sweat you owe him from their hides, _Lord_ Crawley. And when they scream, they will know where to cast the blame.”

With a heated retort already prepared, Aziraphale stepped forward, stopping only when Crowley placed a restraining hand on his shoulder and shook his head. “Then I guess it’s a good thing I let them go,” Crowley drawled, plucking the crown from off his head and resting it on the seat of the throne. It seemed dangerous to leave something so powerful unattended, but Crowley assured the angel, “It’ll find its way home,” then snapped his fingers. A wide-brimmed hat plopped onto his head, and a pair of shades dropped over his eyes.

“Lead the way, angel.”

Not even the ruler of Hades could ignore the conditions of a deal.

Once they reached the outskirts of the town, Crowley pressed a gentlemanly kiss to Aziraphale’s knuckles, then straightened, gesturing for him to walk ahead. He nodded towards Anathema. “Go up there and join her, will you?” When the angel hesitated, he grinned with a confidence he didn’t feel, but which he would gladly fake, and jabbed a thumb towards Newt. “Don’t worry so much. We’ll be right behind you.”

He watched as Aziraphale continued to wrestle with the thought of leaving him again so soon after finding him, and knew the exact moment the angel decided to trust him. His expression became resolute, steel entered his clear blue eyes. “You’d better,” and he darted off to join Anathema while Crowley strolled at a leisurely pace that nonetheless allowed him to catch up to Newt.

The boy started at the sight of him and Crowley grinned, showing off his fangs for the fun of it. When he’d calmed, Newt’s gaze fell on the exposed wound Crowley had neglected to cover, the cavernous depression between his ribs. “What happened to you?” He blurted, and immediately regretted it. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—”

“S’alright.” Crowley inclined his head towards the angel and Anathema. “They can’t hear us. You can say whatever you like.”

Newt considered that. “You and Aziraphale can’t actually die, can you?”

“Not by mortal means, no. Holy water could kill me for good and hellfire could do the same for the angel, but other than that anything lethal would just discorporate us. It destroys our corporations without harming our true selves, and even that tends to vary based on what we _believe_ can kill us.” In truth, the only one at risk of truly dying among their group was Anathema. Vipers and rattlesnakes lurked in the soil, though they would keep their distance if they knew what was good for them.

“So, for example, if you didn’t know that cutting off your head would kill you or imagined that it couldn’t, you’d be perfectly fine.” Crowley took this time to study the boy. There was coal dust etched into the lines of his face. He was drawn and pale and his straps hung from his shoulders, yet still he continued forward, grim and determined.

“Sure,” Crowley muttered. He could hear the workers whispering about him and wondered idly if he’d soon be getting the chance to test that theory. Technically, it wasn’t his fault they signed their lives away to Hades, but he doubted any of them were particularly pleased by his presence. “Mind over matter, yeah? Except I do know that it would discorporate me, which makes it tricky. Quite difficult to know one thing and think another.”

“I’m just saying that if you believe it, maybe your heart could grow back.”

Crowley stared at Newt without blinking, without breathing. It was unsettling enough that the human began to nervously rub his neck, occasionally glancing in the demon’s direction to see if his attention had drifted elsewhere. Eventually, Anathema stumbled, and the spell was broken, each of them momentarily consumed by the act of watching the angel catch her and help her find her feet. And for the briefest of instants, something fond fluttered within the demon’s ribcage.

“What if I’m not good enough for her?” Newt blurted without preamble.

Crowley blinked. “I’m sorry. What are you asking me?”

“I just don’t want to be another cage for her, you know? What if she’s only with me because Agnes Nutter told her she would be? She didn’t seem all too impressed when we first met, you know.” He was nervous. Rambling.

Doubting.

Crowley felt the presence of the Fates like a fingernail running down his spine. They were in the breeze, carried on whispers. “Seems to me that that’s a choice for her to make.” One of his hands came to rest over the burn mark on his chest. “You may want to tamper down on those doubts for now, though. They’ll get you into trouble if you’re not careful.”

Now that Newt’s doubts were alleviated somewhat, he was able to discern the Fates striding beside Anathema and Aziraphale, feeding doubts gleefully into their ears. He surged forward, a warning on his lips, but Crowley held him back. “There’s nothing we can do for them,” he told Newt gravely. “If we try to interfere, they’ll lose the trial.”

_Why would he follow me?_

_Why would he love me?_

_How do I know I’m going the right way?_

_What if he’s not there?_

The rocks and stones cut into her knees and palms when she fell. By the time the soil began to lighten in color, shifting towards sand, Anathema was dizzy with exhaustion. She’d never heard a single footstep behind her throughout the entire journey, which didn’t make any sense considering there should have been hundreds of people marching behind her. Spirits or not, they should have made some sort of noise, shouldn’t they?

Ten paces wasn’t far enough to warrant this maddening silence.

She stood at the mouth of the cave alongside Aziraphale. All she had to do was step out into the sunlight and Newt would be free, but even as she stepped forward, her head was already turning.

Newt froze when their eyes met, one of his feet halfway past the threshold.

There was no time to apologize. Anathema choked on a sob.

And then he was shoved forward, stumbling into her arms, and standing behind him, still trapped within the cave, was Crowley. Aziraphale’s expression morphed to one of horror and grief as he realized what was about to happen, “Wait—”

The clouds parted and rays of sun illuminated the angel’s form as he reached for Crowley. There was a shimmer in the air, and the humans on the beach perceived something that strained comprehension standing where the angel stood, a winged being bearing the faces of a snow-white lion, a pale bull, and a man with silver curls. It lasted only a breath. A single breath where the world teetered on the tip of a quill.

Crowley took a step from the threshold, letting the angel’s outstretched hand fall short, then with a smirk and a tip of his hat, turned on his heel to follow the now irresistible pull back down to Hadestown.

Now, you might be forgiven for believing this to be the end of our tale. Orpheus turned back too soon and lost everything he’d gained but Orpheus, for all his talents and heart, did not have a flaming sword. Had he managed to get his hands on a flaming sword, his story might have had a very different ending. Aziraphale, on the other hand, did indeed possess such a weapon.

After the initial shock had faded, the three left standing on the beach became aware of the sound of a boat engine, and spun around to find an old-fashioned forty-five foot vessel idling off the shore. A small rowboat departed the boat, manned by the world’s most dedicated postal worker, and in his lap was an elongated package covered in international stamps.

Once he docked, he had Aziraphale sign for the package, who numbly did as he was bid, wished them a good day, and then climbed back into his rowboat.

Aziraphale knew its weight, its shape, its heft, and he tore the wrapping off to reveal his blade. It was polished and sharpened, perfectly balanced, and he swung it in an impressive figure-eight, growing accustomed to the image of the sword as an extension of his arm once more. “I never agreed to any deals.” Behind him, his wings expanded, catching the light so that they glittered with stardust. “We were together at the Beginning and we shall be together at the End,” and he soared into the cave, pushing his flying capabilities to their absolute limits as he veered sharply to maneuver around Cerberus and continued to descend, down and down and down.

The tips of his primaries brushed against the stones, occasionally catching on withered branches and dead vines that grabbed and clung onto him like groping hands. More than one of his feathers were lost. The realm had been much more willing to tolerate him when he was traversing through its terrain through more traditional means, and that was without taking into account how little the Underworld appreciated repeat visitors.

This time, he didn’t hesitate to fly over the wall. Just as he feared, a malevolent force extended from the stones, cruel and unyielding, unused to being challenged. Scraped and bruised, Aziraphale brandished his holy weapon against the miasma, and it shrank from his aura, cowering within the wall.

“Yes, well,” Aziraphale said, pleased by this development, “see that you stay put.”

Reaching out with his senses, he searched for any trace of Crowley’s essence, only to be stymied once again by the sheer magnitude and girth of the resentment and despair permeating Hadestown. To remedy this, the angel cast aside the darkness and negativity, filtering through the evil, until a muted spark caught his attention. It pulsed weakly, a dying star. Aziraphale brushed his awareness against it, lending it strength, lending it hope, and the tiny spark absorbed everything he had to give and flared, thrashing and swaying like wildfire.

It was coming from the colosseum.

Aziraphale tucked his wings and plummeted down into the arena, leaving a crater in his wake. He looked up at the King’s pedestal to see Crowley bound to the throne in chains.

Brushing dust off his shoulders with a deliberately casual air, Aziraphale called up to the throne, “Thought I’d come down here and make a bit of trouble.”

Crowley grinned cheekily. “Miss me already, did you?”

“Miss you?” The angel gave a long-suffering sigh, as though the demon was being purposely obtuse. “My dear boy, I will wear a bloody neck brace if I have to. You, _Anthony J. Crowley_ , are leaving this dreadful place and coming home to London with me.” With that, he drew himself up and pumped his wings, propelling himself to the top of the King’s pedestal. When he was level with the throne, he slashed the chains that restrained Crowley. They crumbled into a pile of broken links around his feet.

Rising, Crowley arched his back and stretched, then let out a laugh. “You heard him,” he called to the wispy figures lingering behind the throne. He extended his palm and a contract appeared. He held it aloft, letting it unfurl to its full length so that the Fates could see his sigil etched into the bottom before the edges curled, blackened, and burst into flame. “Contract’s non-binding, anyway. Can’t be official if one or more of the signing parties weren’t willing, and the threat of an eternity spent in the deepest pit of Hell definitely counts as coercion.” He tipped his hat to the Fates with a roguish grin. “Tell Hades to take it up with Lucifer if he has a problem with it. I’m retired.”

Black and white wings expanded and they leapt from the pedestal, their feathers catching on an impossible updraft that would carry them to the surface. They soared over the mines, staring down at the milling groups of workers still trapped within Hadestown’s iron grip.

“I wouldn’t worry about it too much, Guardian.” Ignorant of the effect hearing his title uttered so casually had on the angel, Crowley tilted his head towards the humans with a self-satisfied smirk. “Got it into their heads to unionize.”

“Is that so?” Though the smile Aziraphale regarded him with was sad and somewhat bitter, he managed to inject some cheer into his voice, “Well, I’m glad to hear it. Persephone will be pleased I’m sure.” He did not believe for a moment that Crowley required a heart to be good, yet the reminder that his best, most cherished friend did not possess one dampened the triumph of the moment, nonetheless.

When they arrived on the beach, Anathema and Newt were sitting side by side on the dunes, watching the waves roll in with their fingers entwined, his thumb tracing the path of her beauty marks like a constellation. With a minor miracle, Aziraphale lessened the disturbance their wings would cause, allowing them to land soundlessly on the beach without disturbing the pair and fold them out of sight. They must have sensed them, however, because the humans turned as one, their eyes going wide at the sight of them, and scrambled to their feet. Anathema rushed to Aziraphale, wrapping him in a fierce hug, while Crowley and Newt looked on.

“Thank you for keeping an eye on me down there.” The demon arched a brow at the young human standing next to him, wondering what he was playing at with this gratitude nonsense.

“Don’t mention it,” Crowley said emphatically, crossing his arms over his chest. “Your girlfriend would have killed me if anything permanent happened to you.”

“Fiance, actually,” Newt corrected him with pride, showing off a ring of seaweed on his finger. A quick peek revealed that Anathema carried its matching pair.

Impressed, Crowley gave him a congratulatory bump on the shoulder. “Good on you. Popped the question, did you?”

“Actually, she’s the one that did the asking, but I was planning on asking her myself, anyway, so it all worked out in the end, I think.”

They didn’t have to wait long for a boat to come to take them to the mainland. The sailors had no idea why they drove their vessel to the island, but were happy enough to lend a hand to what they assumed to be a group of hapless tourists. The reward for their kindness was a year’s worth of good health, which Crowley let pass without comment. As long as he was on a plane heading back to London by the end of the day, the angel could bless the entire population of Greece with winning lottery tickets for all he cared.

In the end, he and Newt spent the majority of the flight fast asleep, waking only after they landed to trudge through the terminal and then climb into the taxi Anathema arranged for the final leg of the journey.

Perhaps, gradually, through rest and the healing attributes of time, the missing piece of Crowley’s core will rebuild, until one day when he and Aziraphale are dancing in the bookshop, celebrating the birth of Anathema and Newt’s third grandchild, a heart will stutter to life in his chest. And he will look at the angel with eyes both new and old, his name a whisper on his lips, and when they embrace with trembling limbs, it will feel like a reunion. It will feel like coming home.

But that is a tale for another time.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! 
> 
> If you liked it, please leave a kudos and let us know what you think in the comments.


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